


Measure a year

by throwmetomorrow



Series: Shame!mcfassy AU [2]
Category: Shame (2011)
Genre: Angst, Branlet, Cats, Childhood Trauma, Codependence, Community: mcfassy, Hamsters, Jamieling, M/M, Sex Addiction, baths, behavior disorders, sexlet
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-02
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2018-07-28 22:24:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 120,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7659145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/throwmetomorrow/pseuds/throwmetomorrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to <i>Prince of rain</i>.<br/>Against the current, Brandon and Jamie somehow ended up staying together. Neither of them, however, has any greater idea of what exactly "together" means. And so they have quite a journey ahead of them, one which will take them to places neither of them wished they knew existed, but which will also allow them to become more than they thought they could be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. June: Walking on sunshine

**Author's Note:**

> _525,600 minutes_   
>  _525,600 moments so dear_   
>  _525,600 minutes_   
>  _How do you measure, measure a year?_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _In daylights - in sunsets_  
>  _In midnights - in cups of coffee_  
>  _In inches - in miles_  
>  _In laughter - in strife_
> 
> _In 525,600 minutes_  
>  _How do you measure a year in a life?_  
>  [ _Seasons of Love_ from the musical Rent]  
>  EDIT April 2018: As some of you may have realized by now without my saying so, the ask blog is dead because reasons (seriously though, those are some damn fine reasons) and so is my own tumblr (same). Still, you can use [quotev](https://www.quotev.com) if you have any questions for Jamie, Brandon, or myself.  
> My username there is throwmetomorrow as well.
> 
> I kind of thought _Measure a year_ might be going on hiatus, but from the way things look right now it may just be the case I needed a break. We'll see how things will go. If they go fine, I should post a new chapter (the first subchapter at least) still in April.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's June, less than two weeks after Brandon unexpectedly returned to Jamie after an equally (?) unexpected sex binge. Upon Brandon's request they have another try at sex, this time with Jamie as the top. Jamie struggles to make himself comfortable in that unfamiliar role, all the while trying to manage his conflicting feelings of concern about Brandon, his own insecurities, and the uneasy yet overwhelming passion towards his lover-to-be.

It was a peaceful Saturday morning. The rays of sun sprinkled through the window of Jamie’s bedroom, covering the room with a thin warm veil of gold. The air was warm, and the summer was almost there. It made Jamie feel like sunshine, literally, both on the inside and on the outside.

Brandon’s familiar earthy scent wrapped itself around Jamie even before he opened his eyes and caressingly traced the other man’s lanky figure with his sleep-dazed gaze. The view, the scent, the whispering sound of Brandon’s breath rustling in Jamie’s bed-ruffled hair, all combined to form one blissful sensation that set Jamie at peace.

But underneath it all, Jamie could feel the urge to keep that moment forever bubbling up inside him. Now that they had chosen to take that step, the thought one day he might be forced to let Brandon go was still less bearable than ever. The danger seemed so far away now, and yet so frustratingly real. Love was like salty water – you drank it to quench your thirst, but it was never enough. The more you drank, the more of it you needed to stay alive.

A little more than a week before, Jamie was almost convinced that he had lost Brandon, that this time Brandon really was gone for good. 

Then, after those three long days alternately marred with rage, sorrow, worry and grief, Jamie wasn’t quite as surprised as he perhaps should have when Brandon turned up, or rather, showed up at the back alley right beside Jamie’s apartment. For all the faith he had seemed to have lost by then, clearly Jamie carried on believing that somehow he and Brandon were meant to be – that their connection wasn’t something to disregard, something that happened randomly and could go away just as randomly. Whatever it was that had brought them together, those two wounded and isolated souls, it was undoubtedly more than simple physicality, more than mere attraction… and besides, as their story had so far shown, it was in fact neither physicality nor attraction. At least not right now, and not on Brandon’s part.

 _Soulmate_. Now that was a huge word that Jamie wanted to avoid, and had avoided successfully for the last several lonely years. It almost seemed like he had eliminated all such grandiosity and self-indulgence from his emotional vocabulary, like he had got rid of those perfect match expectations that all his life had been setting him up for disappointments.

But right now… it somehow felt right to remember that word, the way it sounded, the way it tasted inside his mind. 

Because after all, with all the doubt, despair and confusion they had been through and even more of all that which was still to come, Brandon… he might have just been the one.

When they were having that magical bath of theirs right after a stray Brandon had come back home, Brandon made it clear that he wanted their relationship to move forward. Or, to put it bluntly, he wanted Jamie to have sex with him. And not just any sex – he wanted Jamie to be the top.

Outrageous as it may have sounded, especially under the circumstances of Brandon having just returned from an acting-out sex spree, his addiction yet again grabbing the best of him and making him engage in an abusive group act, there was no denying the excited tingle that rushed through Jamie’s body each time he as much as imagined what it would feel like. The thrill of that prospect was just so exquisite, and Jamie was all ready and willing to try. It didn’t matter if that seemed so out of place, and he didn’t care about how little confidence he had in his abilities to top, to take the lead of a sex act the way Brandon apparently expected him to. 

Yes, deep inside him Jamie did have his concerns about how he would fail at the task, about how he was doomed to underperform. Brandon was a sex expert, after all, and with the little experience and even less skill that Jamie could call his own, he was understandably anxious about not living up to Brandon’s expectations. How could he ever compete with all those people Brandon had previously been intimate with? Sex with him wasn’t exactly a groundbreaking experience, as he had been aware all along – and as Brandon had confirmed by not getting back to the topic of their sleeping together ever since their first, and thus far only, shared night. And what was about to happen now was that much more demanding of Jamie, that much more of a challenge.

Jamie did his best, however, to try and dismiss those anxious thoughts and focus on all and the only things that mattered, or which at least seemed that way. Brandon wanted to have sex with him – he had trusted Jamie enough to allow him that close, to expose himself to him and watch Jamie expose himself in return in that unadorned union of bodies and souls. And that did mean something. Brandon was a sex addict, after all. He suffered from a chronic, deeply ingrained intimacy aversion. If now he had decided to cast away his defenses and become physically bonded with someone he had chosen as his friend and companion, there could hardly be any better reasons to celebrate than that. 

It was an unquestioned indication of how Brandon was winning back his integrity, his courage to be himself. A sign of healing. A sign of hope. 

***

They had that conversation back in the bathroom, after they had taken a bath together upon Brandon’s nearly-miraculous return. 

Bashful as he may have been when discussing sex-related matters, this time Jamie made an investment into being quite open and explicit so as to leave little to no room for misunderstandings. It was Brandon’s well-being, safety and dignity that mattered; Jamie’s inhibitions didn’t.

“So… what exactly are we going to do about the… thing?”, Jamie started awkwardly as he gently rubbed Brandon’s back with a towel to wipe it dry. 

And how unnerving, and at the same time endearing, was to watch Brandon appear so completely oblivious once such questions had been asked.

“Didn’t I tell you we would check out your big stuff?”, Brandon responded matter-of-factly, actually shrugging his shoulders in the process. How could he pull such a straight face saying things like those? Like it was something they were used to doing on a daily basis, to say the least! Not to mention Jamie wasn’t really familiar with having certain parts of his physicality called _his big stuff_ or anything, too. 

Predictably, Jamie felt his cheeks set on fire. He coughed, and inhaled deeply, trying not to get distracted by Brandon’s apparently carefree approach to whatever was about to happen between the two of them.

“You see, I’d like it to be something really good for you, but I’m concerned about how I should even get around to it. I am aware that even plain touch isn’t anything nice and easy for you, and yet what we’re going to do… I mean, that’s the most intimate kind of touch you can imagine, right?”

Jamie’s heartfelt words were only received with a disinterested look from Brandon, the jaded gaze basically saying ‘why should I give a damn about your romantic nonsense’. “Alright, so what you mean is… are we going to do it then, or not?”, he bluntly convinced Jamie to stop beating around the bush.

Jamie responded with a yet another blush, which apart from his cheeks also covered his inner sense of unease at how Brandon seemed disconnected with the important message that Jamie was trying to get across here, and how he was apparently only driven to getting the act done, unbothered by any of its emotional and spiritual implications.

“Yes, we will, provided you can promise that you will do everything in your power to make something good for yourself out of it.”

Brandon nodded complacently, but his eyes still revealed little comprehension of Jamie’s point. “Right… but what exactly do you mean? Because I don’t really understand that”, he admitted eventually in all fairness.

Jamie exhaled as he patiently proceeded with his explanation. “It’s just that sex doesn’t have to hurt.” He shuddered internally at how revealing this commonplace phrase sounded when it came to Brandon and the way he would sail across his own frantic, despondent life. Nevertheless, Jamie carried on, maintaining his calm tone and the mellow gaze he kept fixed at Brandon. “It also doesn’t have to make you feel scared or angry, or guilty. And what I want is really just that. I want us to do that so that you won’t go through any pain, or humiliation, or fear. I want it to be something really beautiful for you.”

Brandon escaped Jamie with his eyes and awkwardly rolled his stare around the bathroom walls in what Jamie interpreted as an endearing bashfulness. “I… I could try that”, he admitted hesitantly, without pretending to have understood even now whatever Jamie wanted from him.

But it didn’t bother Jamie. That was the way it had to be. If that thing between them was to work, it was Jamie who had to take on the role of the leader, Brandon’s guide into the world of healthy and compassionate sex that would bring people closer instead of setting them apart. He had to be confident in what he was saying and where they were headed – and strangely enough, confident he was like hardly ever before.

“And you will tell me at once if anything feels wrong, alright?”, he made sure as he approached Brandon with a trusting smile, taking the palm of his hand to stroke it soothingly. Responding to Brandon’s somehow reluctant nod, he continued: “Actually we can start that part right away. Please tell me the truth if you’re still hurting after… after what happened?”

Brandon peered at Jamie unsurely. His reply was, however, somewhat predictable. “No, I’m not. It only hurt for a moment.”

Of course it did. Jamie wasn’t naïve enough to be convinced otherwise, even though a part of the reason of Brandon’s proclaimed resistance to pain might have been that his addiction had got him accustomed to various aggressive carnal incentives enough to considerably elevate his pain threshold. Even so, this can’t have been the whole story. This was a violent act they were talking about, and not that Brandon was even used to bottoming an anal intercourse in the first place. Jamie still remembered uncomfortable sensations in his lower back after the first time he and Jessie had gone all the way, and Jessie had been extra careful and tender. There was no way Brandon would feel as good as new a day or two after such an orgy.

So the reason why Jamie was asking that question had not really been to learn the truth, but rather to learn about Brandon’s stand on it. And that was of a man who had no respect for himself, and expected to be shown no respect either. 

“We’re going to wait until you’re okay, but even then it might hurt when I touch you”, Jamie explained calmly, patiently, as he smoothed the stringy back of Brandon’s hand with his thumb. “I’m going to be very gentle, but still it will be quite a load to take for your body. If it hurts, just tell me to stop, okay? Can you remember just that?”

Brandon nodded his head, unconvinced. Jamie felt he had to leave it at that, and chose to remind Brandon of that agreement time and again whenever the need arose. They still had a long way to go – and, fortunately, quite some time to spare as they moved along that path together.

***

While they were waiting for Brandon’s abrasions to heal, Jamie used that time to resolve the urgent matter of Brandon’s STD testing. 

As it turned out, Jamie had been perfectly correct to assume Brandon’s recklessness about the matter; he understood that when Brandon got into that trance of his, the very same trance as the evening they had met, he was unable to get his mind on anything other than getting the sex that he wanted, the way that he wanted, the second that he wanted. What Jamie underestimated, however, was the degree of Brandon’s ignorance about that problem.

The first red flag appeared as soon as with the answer to Jamie’s very first question, seemingly as plain and simple as it got: “Were you protected?”. Expecting a straightforward ‘yes’ or ‘no’, Jamie genuinely hadn’t seen it coming when Brandon replied that he had no idea, adding a supplementary piece of information that it _seemed_ to him that he indeed had been, but he could not vouch for that.

Jamie could feel the blood freeze inside his veins. The only explanation for not remembering something that essential to one’s health and safety was being too intoxicated to care. That explanation made also a good fit with Brandon’s suspicious resilience to such a violent and damaging act – apparently he had made himself feel very little during it, and remember even less afterwards.

Terrifying scenarios were racing through Jamie’s head. What else would Brandon get high on apart from the sex? Alcohol? Cocaine? Party drugs? Some random mixture shit of unknown origins? All of the above? The mere thought suddenly felt like it was getting too much for Jamie’s head to bear.

Of course, the reality might have been much simpler, even though not that much of a consolation: Brandon might have been lying about his amnesia to cover up the unsightly truth that he actually had deliberately had unprotected intercourse with a gang of strangers. 

Anyway, his own fright aside, Jamie did his best to keep his cool and discuss the delicate matter as methodically as possible. He told Brandon he appreciated his being so honest (himself doubting that honesty notwithstanding), and encouraged him to run the necessary tests. To show his support, he promised he would go together with Brandon and test himself, too. Not that he was concerned about his own health in any degree – his sex life had been nonexistent for a number of years now and that one time he had done it with Brandon was about 95% safe – so it was essentially all about Brandon’s aid.

As for Brandon, he was extremely passive and compliant all the way through the conversation. He had no objections to being tested, but also had no inhibitions in confessing he had never been tested for STDs before, again making Jamie weak-kneed at his irresponsibility and lack of imagination. 

For a man of such rich sexual experience and that level of sophistication in bed, it was also hard to believe – and yet in a strange way really fitting – how uninformed Brandon was in terms of ensuring his and his partners’ safety. He would say, for example, putting on a completely straight face, that he hadn’t found it necessary to test himself, because he would always wear protection (yeah, save for the times when you didn’t remember, right?, thought Jamie). And upon Jamie’s explanation that even the most careful protection could sometimes fail and the more partners you had the more were statistical odds against you, Brandon appeared mostly upset about his (completely imaginary) making Jamie angry for making him think Branon might have infected him (so no, not even about the possibility of actually having infected him), rather than the repercussions it might have had for his own health and future.

This reticently expressed concern on Brandon’s part, his anxiety lest he be rejected unwittingly made Jamie feel guilty, although he did reassure Brandon that even if for whatever bad luck reasons he had contracted something, he would still consider this his own responsibility and his alone. As Jamie himself had put it, “the rules are plain and simple, if you want to stay hundred percent safe, just don’t sleep with strangers”. 

And he did mean it. He had known the rules and he had played by them. The point wasn’t about who was to blame and who had abused or harmed whom at all. It was all about Brandon totally not understanding the concept of safe sex, of responsibility and of thinking ahead – and that was precisely the part that worried Jamie, much more than the risk of himself having contracted anything, which given absolutely no symptoms in almost three months time was significantly low anyway.

As it turned out several days later, they were both tested negative in all departments. Jamie rhetorically wondered to himself if Brandon had any clue about how lucky he had been.

Now that they both could feel safe and secure and no futile what-ifs could cloud the clarity of their conversation, Jamie got back to the topic of protection. He made a comment on how concerned he was about the fact that Brandon couldn’t remember if he had been protected that last very risky time. 

He inquired if Brandon liked to lose himself while on the go – inquired just for the sake of inquiring, because he was more or less sure that such strategic ‘forgetfulness fits’ can’t have been an accident.

Brandon responded that well, yeah, he did. Jamie remarked as calmly and objectively as he could afford that he was far from judging him, but admittedly, he feared for him. Brandon had just hurt himself, and Jamie was afraid what it would lead to if something like that happened again. He made Brandon promise he would watch out and take care of himself from now on – and, quite expectedly, Brandon showed no objections, agreeing to Jamie’s conditions without much deliberation.

Jamie’s capacity for optimism was extraordinary, and yet under these circumstances even he was hesitant if Brandon’s wasn’t a word of an alcoholic who could swear almost anything just to get the scrutinizing, persistent close ones off of his back.

***

Managing the STD tests was an appropriate way to fill the period of waiting until Brandon was ready for the kind of lovemaking that he demanded. Jamie deemed it necessary to put it off for at least a week, even though Brandon, naturally, had claimed that he was ready to proceed straight away, with an utter disregard of his own pain and discomfort. It was almost like pain and discomfort turned him on. 

Jamie got Brandon a soothing ointment and instructed him as to how to apply it. He also advised him to take warm baths frequently, preferably a few times a day. 

He indicated he could help Brandon out and check his injuries. He proposed that for quite a few reasons. It would be easier and more efficient to have it done by someone else. Jamie had some knowledge and experience that would help him assess Brandon’s condition accurately. And perhaps most importantly, Brandon could use some nurturing by letting someone take care of him and treat the intimate parts of his body right in a non-sexual way. 

Nevertheless, all Brandon had to say about this matter was a firm ‘no’. And since the nature of the issue required tact and discretion, Jamie decided not to insist. 

“I can handle it”, Brandon would explain to him in a headstrong, almost defensive manner. 

“Of course you can”, admitted Jamie. “It’s just that you don’t have to. You’re not out there on your own anymore.”

Brandon could hear those words just fine, but Jamie realized that it would still take plenty of time until they sunk into Brandon, getting him to understand what exactly Jamie meant. 

For now Jamie had to trust Brandon that he could evaluate his condition on his own – and it was a lot to ask of Jamie, especially as he had witnessed how low his own well-being was on Brandon’s list of priorities. Jamie knew better than to pester, and he had shown his respect of Brandon’s boundaries by leaving him in charge. He did, however, feel compelled to check with Brandon by asking those awkwardly private questions every now and then, such as if the sensitive damaged parts bled or hurt when he used the toilet.

Truth be told, Brandon seemed much less bothered by answering those questions than Jamie by asking them. His responses were composed, concise and to the point, while Jamie tossed and turned between his own embarrassment, feeling insensitive, ashamed and somewhat silly for barging in on someone’s privacy like that on the one hand, and his need to stay in control and make sure Brandon’s recovery was advancing just fine on the other.

***

When the big day finally arrived, they set out together for a drugstore to buy the necessary supplies. 

First, Jamie led Brandon to a shelf with bath products. As he wanted to repeat the agreeable experience of bathing together before they proceeded to something more physically and emotionally charged, he figured it would be wise to have Brandon himself pick something, such as a massage oil or a capsule, to make the bath all the more soothing and at the same time sensual. 

It was supposed to be Brandon’s evening, an unforgettable one at that, so Jamie was genuinely concerned about making Brandon feel as comfortable in his own skin, and right beside Jamie’s skin, as it could get.

Next they set out to choose several accessories for their main planned activity. This step instantly made Jamie fidgety and more than a little nervous. He could feel his cheeks set on fire the moment they stood in front of the condom shelf; the impression that anyone who saw them could exactly tell what was going on inside Jamie’s head and consequently passed him by with ridicule and disgust made him want to curl up and hide away in a corner.

Trying to pull himself together, he stuttered to Brandon that “erm… well… you can choose whichever you like, whichever look, well, appealing to you”, awkwardly pointing with his eyes to the condom packages. As predicted, Brandon decided on one of the packages swiftly and with plenty of an experience-indicating poise. In the meantime, Jamie had put a tube of lubricant in their basket, mumbling something about how this particular brand and type “always seemed to work just fine”. 

Eventually they went ahead to the register. Upon hearing the cashier beep Jamie realized that their evening plans had now reached the point of inevitability – now there was no turning back. 

From now on their relationship was bound to acquire the status of a ‘normal relationship’, ‘full-fledged’ with a sexual aspect to it. And, to make things all the more serious, the responsibility to make it work was Jamie’s alone.

Because Brandon, as it seemed, intended mostly to stand there and watch by as Jamie was putting his all to give him the sexual experience he deserved.

As they were walking back home, Jamie’s mixed feelings of anxiety and excitement would only intensify. The self-imposed expectations were nerve-wracking. What if he let Brandon down? What if he wasn’t any good? 

Because being experienced as he was, for better or worse, Brandon must have been used to mind-blowing sex, or at least had his firm ideas of what mind-blowing sex should be like, and as for Jamie… well, physicality had never been his strongest suit, right? Self-conscious in the extreme, he was an awkward lover to say the least. He lacked spontaneity and confidence, as well as flexibility that would make him a good catch in bed – and now, for the act that so much in his relationship with Brandon seemed to weigh upon, he was supposed to take on the role he had never played before. 

Could he possibly live up to all this? Could this not end up a disaster? Could he not drive Brandon away and convince him never to try sex with Jamie again?

Hesitant and full of second thoughts of that sort, Jamie advanced to prepare their mood-setting bath. He couldn’t help but wonder just why and how Brandon was able stay so calm all that time. Was all this fuss really nothing more but a daily cup of tea to him, this very same plan and event that Jamie was so concerned about and felt, if in a slightly over-dramatizing way, like the rest of his life might be depending upon it?

Shaking off the fruitless musings, Jamie turned his head to face Brandon, with his elbow down in the tube checking the heat of the water.

“I’ve got to apologize in advance for asking you all these silly mood-destroying questions, but…” Having produced this highly typical and not exactly enticing disclaimer, Jamie sighed and carried on with whatever he intended to say. “… But I’d really rather be pestering and ridiculous than risk upsetting you.” 

Holding on to what appeared like a half-hearted attention on Brandon’s part, Jamie continued with his query. “Is there anything that you absolutely don’t want me to do, or any list of such things?” 

Brandon wasn’t all that quick to answer, and Jamie knew better than to wait for him to express his thoughts with accuracy and detail. Instead, resigned, he opted for asking a bunch of yes-no questions, which may have left little room for romanticism, but even less for misunderstandings, and much more for honesty. “Such as, is any kissing allowed?”

“Kissing would be odd”, replied Brandon concisely and confidently, “but it’s not a definite no”. Something about his tone made Jamie cringe a little on the inside. Yes, he did realize Brandon had his issues and that the way he felt about sex and closeness was possibly way too complex for Jamie to comprehend. Still, with all the intimacy they had shared so far, why should kissing him feel _odd_ to Brandon? Not to mention _they had_ kissed before, hadn’t they? So, whatever it was that had changed, whatever was not alright about kissing now? Being his self-absorbed self, Jamie couldn’t help the poisonous little thought deep inside that there must have been something wrong with _him_ , something that disgusted or repelled Brandon about getting that intimate with him.

On the second thought, Jamie couldn’t help wondering why he had even asked that question in first place if all he expected was a confirmation that Brandon was okay with kissing, or at least being kissed. Or perhaps his inner voice had been telling him all the while that it was a sensitive issue and he _was supposed to_ make sure about that? Enter all the Pretty Woman clichés about prostitutes never kissing their clients on the lips. Well, a curious matter that appeared here was who exactly was being the prostitute in this setting, was it Brandon or Jamie? Anyway, the cliché itself must have been perfectly familiar to Brandon from both sides.

Jamie shuddered over the bath, shaking his head in disbelief at his own overreacting imagination running wild. These thoughts were so crazy, and actually what were they about anyway? He had asked about that to make sure Brandon was comfortable and safe while in bed with him. Brandon had an absolute right to refuse kissing or anything else, and his background probably provided him with good reasons to do so. And not that it mattered right now. They were honest and trusting towards one another, and they were on the verge of something special, a turning point to cement their bond and make it grow. Details like those were minor and insignificant. 

At the end of the day, anything could hurt Brandon, while Jamie could do without anything.

“Alright”, Jamie finally confirmed after a longer while of pondering. “So in case you do want to kiss me just go ahead and do it first.” 

He asked Brandon a few more specific questions regarding how and where he wanted or did not want to be touched. Brandon, however, had few requirements off the top of his head. The discussion thus didn’t carry on for too long, with Jamie expectedly being the more active and interested party. Jamie found that rather exhausting, but quite rewarding at the same time. He felt those childlike tingles all over his body at a mere thought he was allowed to do it all for Brandon, to introduce him to that whole new dimension of sex and positively make a difference.

It wasn’t just about getting physical, obviously. With each passing minute drawing them closer to their act Jamie came to realize with more and more clarity that he was on a mission, like there was an almost spiritual side to it all. It felt exciting, and validating, and rewarding, and Jamie was more than willing to give it his all to make it happen. 

***

They spent their bath time in an almost perfect silence, trimmed only with the echo of the water splashing and with their steady, almost soundless breathing. 

With the sight of Brandon’s beautiful body right opposite himself and his warm scent mixed with the steam wrapping tightly around their skin, Jamie tried hard to relax and focus on the present. At a certain point he found himself rather desperate to brush off the nagging, unwanted thoughts that had accompanied him all day long.

_Will I be good enough? Will I not fail? Will I not hurt him? Is it really alright? What am I expecting? Am I not making an idiot of myself?_

On the other hand, Brandon stayed very calm, almost drowsy. At the deepest corner of his consciousness, Jamie felt a sting of disappointment – well, Brandon could have shown at least _a slightest bit_ of excitement, right? Yet, he was quick to override it with an optimistic confidence that Brandon’s stillness was in fact a display of trust. 

And thus, Brandon’s cool was passed on to Jamie. If Brandon seemed to remain so unconcerned, if so little seemed to bother him, then Jamie himself, too, had all the fewer reasons to be concerned and bothered. 

He washed Brandon like he had the previous time, retaining maximum awareness and gentleness in each single move. He wanted his every touch to feel like caress, a nurturing one instead of arousing. He had really liked their bath the last time, with their sensuality so childlike and trusting, and yet not in the least sexual. He made it his point to replicate it; he felt that would be the right direction for them.

As Brandon returned the favor, wandering around Jamie’s body with a sponge, what he seemed was perhaps even a little subdued, somewhat silenced on the inside. It made Jamie feel a little worried. What if Brandon was struggling so much with his addictive impulses right now that he couldn’t possibly enjoy the bath? 

What if their closeness made him so apprehensive that he had to shut down all emotions so that the scorching hot arousal would not devour him? 

What if that whole sex thing was really just that to Brandon, nothing more than a constant struggle and trial to keep his fantasies, his organic needs contained? 

Perhaps getting him into that bath right now wasn’t such a great idea after all.

This incessant unease, both about his own performance and about Brandon’s well-being, had overwhelmed Jamie to the point he himself almost couldn’t be present to their shared bath anymore. Once he realized that, however, he focused his energy to fight the concerns off.

He leant closer towards Brandon, and he gave into the sensation of the rough surface of the sponge massaging and moistening his skin, as directed by Brandon’s awe-strikingly exquisite, lean fingers. He was so close he could almost feel Brandon’s breath warm up the tenseness of his body. He lifted his gaze to meet Brandon’s quiet eyes of jade, and upon confirming how laid-back Brandon’s gaze was, he smiled in faith and relief. 

As Brandon returned the smile, Jamie was already sure: he was back where he belonged, right in that welcoming embrace of the arms that genuinely needed him. All he had to do was let it go. There was no reason to be afraid. What they had set out to do was the right thing, and now they only had to follow through. 

As the water cooled down and the time seemed right to advance, Jamie pulled himself out of the tub first. Then he stretched his arms towards Brandon, helping him up and out. The moistened skin of Brandon’s hands against Jamie’s felt warm and gentle, the pulse in their arteries combining in a joint, harmonious rhythm. 

With one hand Jamie reached for the towel rack and took a fresh, clean tower to wipe Brandon’s skin dry, rubbing against it gently, as if afraid to hurt him. He could count all the lazy droplets upon Brandon’s soft, well-groomed skin, and he was standing close enough to see his own reflection in practically each of them. In a sense, it gave Jamie a taste of what was about to come, of what he dreamed to come: a perfect communion in which he would be reflected inside Brandon, engraved into him, becoming a part of him. The sweetness carried by that promise made him shudder on the inside. 

Then Jamie swiftly wrapped a bathrobe around Brandon, concerned not to let Brandon suffer any chill upon the contrast of the warmth of the water and the cool of the bathroom air. He covered Brandon’s nakedness and tied the belt around his waist carefully, like he was packing a precious gift. Then, he himself put on a bathrobe, albeit this time with much less particular movements to accompany the process. 

Finally, as the time had grown ripe, Jamie took Brandon by the palm of his slender, marble-like hand, and he gazed into those jade green eyes, finding there no more and no less than peace and tranquility, and a certain, quiet sparkle of curiosity. Jamie trembled at the waves of warmth and amazement taking over his body. 

At that moment he was quite sure he did not remember feeling as guilelessly vulnerable and, simply, as in love as that.

For a moment, all the anxiety and uncertainty had disappeared. Jamie was just being there, completely present and immersed in that scene, right beside the man he loved and wanted with every bit, every nerve, every particle of his body.

Gripping Brandon’s hand gently yet decisively, swallowing its pulsating heat into his own, Jamie led him straight into the bedroom. Upon Jamie’s switching on the bedside lamp, the place was aglow with the dim, cozy light. 

The shadows of the objects cast upon the floor and the walls, the sound of hamsters scurrying in the corner, and the silhouettes of two men tense with their yearning to belong and to take delight in each other, all cross-faded in some kind of intricate interplay. 

Jamie turned to face Brandon, treating his eyes to the sight of Brandon’s stern, manly features, the lanky outline of his shoulders, the slender, arrow-like form of his torso and legs. Captivated by Brandon’s beauty, all at once Jamie had found himself yet again in the grip of his self-doubt. To let this exquisite creature down, to turn out not good enough for him, to embarrass himself in front of him… should anything go wrong and any of those happen, Jamie would be buried alive with shame.

And how out of line he was in the first place for even thinking he could manage someone like Brandon, someone so… out of his league? 

Straightening his back as if to prevent his self-imposed expectations from crashing down on him, Jamie sent Brandon a timid smile. Then he undid his own bathrobe smoothly, attentively, and then placed it randomly on the floor. 

For a while he had been trying to avoid Brandon’s gaze. It was certainly not like it was the first time Brandon would see him naked – they had just exited a bath they shared, for chrissake – but in a way, it did seem to Jamie like the first time. The nerves, the unknown, the pressure of being checked out and evaluated were exactly that. 

Before he could go crazy with all that turbulent life going on inside his head, however, Jamie fronted onto Brandon, exposing himself and entrusting Brandon with all his vulnerability, covering nothing. 

Brandon was being Brandon, apparently unmoved, his face revealing nothing, not even a flinch. Decisive about not letting that unsettle him, Jamie slowly moved himself towards the bed, carefully placing himself there on his back, trying to appear as open and available as it could get. 

With a tiny nodding gesture, Jamie invited Brandon to move over and lie beside him. Then a shimmer of wistful unease grabbed a hold of him, the moment he realized this would be the first time he would welcome someone into this very bed and give into that someone since he had last made love to Jessie all those years ago. Now wasn’t the best moment to remember all that – the sights, the sounds, the tastes, the air of mutual hostility and distrust covered with a thin veil of a matter-of-fact, virtually robotic tenderness. In fact, it was the worst moment of all just to do that. Jamie took a deep breath and puffed energetically, as if he intended to get rid of the unwanted recollection along with the air. 

Shaking off these associations didn’t really ask that much of Jamie, or at least not anymore so, as soon as Brandon shed his own bathrobe and showed himself to Jamie. Jamie swallowed nervously, looking at Brandon’s gorgeous, if still a little grazed and bruised, body in sheer awe. As if ultimately realizing what was about to happen within minutes’ reach, Jamie could feel his skin set ablaze.

As Brandon bent down on the bed and leant towards Jamie, his smooth, reserved gaze scanned Jamie’s body all over, only stopping and fixing intently upon Jamie’s crotch. Unexpectedly, he radiated a smile of anticipation and approval, unambiguously letting Jamie know if he liked what he saw. 

Jamie needed no more. It was like a fireball exploding right inside his groin, his penis erecting as if Brandon had specifically told it to. It was just about enough to cause Jamie to cringe with embarrassment, but at the same time also to make him feel like he couldn’t care less. 

Amused, Brandon looked up into Jamie’s eyes. Jamie returned the stare and smiled back at Brandon, relaxing into the moment in spite of all the heat, the pace of his blood, or how sheepish he felt at getting instantly horny like a naïve teenager. Somewhere on a deeper level, he really tried his best not to be troubled by his getting hard before Brandon had, blocking the persistent thoughts such as _there’s been no actual cue yet, the time is not right_ and _he must be having a blast seeing how inept I am_. 

Thus ignoring all that was going on at the back of his mind, Jamie drew himself closer to Brandon. He suddenly felt an urge to hold him tight, to rock him tenderly in his arms, and lavish his gorgeous body with gestures of admiration and devotion. But then, in reality he was unable to even consider it, even when having Brandon so privately close. 

Even though Brandon was right there barely a few inches away, naked and seemingly so reachable, Jamie wouldn’t dare to touch him. It was this strangest feeling, like Brandon was surrounded by an invisible shield saying _no touching permitted_ , like hugs and caresses would rub him the wrong way just as he had said kisses would. _We’re only here for sex_ , Brandon’s restrained air appeared to say, _so don’t get all friendly and clingy on me, understand?_

In an attempt to imitate Brandon’s restraint yet compromise it with his own desire for closeness, Jamie moved his lips towards Brandon’s ear, almost brushing it as he voiced his thoughts in a soft-spoken, slightly playful manner.

“You see, I’ve been thinking…” He paused, careful not to lose his balance and to set aside his qualms about talking of as well as during sex, since he was convinced, at least intellectually, that keeping it open and honest was the right thing to do. “… I’d like to do it in such a way that’d allow you to have as much control as possible, such as me lying on my back and you on top. If we do it like that, you’ll be the one in control. What… what do you think?”

He was quite proud of himself at having managed to articulate all that heavy stuff with only marginal stumbling and stammering. 

And also, apparently his point did come across, since after a moment or two of consideration it elicited an accurate response from Brandon.

“I’ve never tried it that way. But I guess I’m fine with it, if it makes you feel good.” 

Somehow Jamie found himself remotely disappointed about this _Okay, whatever you please_ attitude on Brandon’s part. _It’s not about making me feel good, it’s all about you, silly_ , he thought, but obviously lacking the guts to put that in words, he responded to Brandon’s narration like it was something natural and expected. “I haven’t tried that, either”, he laughed like he was trying to silence his own doubts. “I mean I have, but not in this role. I think that, apart from all the, well, welcome sensations, it’s always given me a sense of security, which I believe is precisely what you need right now.” 

Next, Jamie reached out to the bedside cabinet and pulled out a drawer to grab a pack of condoms and the lubricant they had bought earlier that day. “Ready to go?”, he made sure as he placed the appliances by the pillow. 

“Sure”, responded Brandon sparsely, yet firmly. There was something about that moment, perhaps its inherent no-turning-back quality, or how confident Brandon seemed, even oblivious if anything could go wrong in this scene – it was only sex, right? Now whatever could be easier than that, whatever was so challenging about that? – that made Jamie internally wince. 

In fact, the prospect of failing, and how he had to get things going now while unsure how to, froze out most of Jamie’s excitement, replacing it with tense apprehension.

Nevertheless, as he inhaled to reclaim at least enough composure to carry on without attracting too much attention to his own bemusement, he managed to put on an encouraging smile, the encouragement intended for himself as much as for Brandon. 

He unpacked a condom and pulled it over the middle finger of his right hand. That was a precaution to make sure his touch would be as mild and non-invasive as possible, an approximation of latex gloves he used for examining his patients at work. Then he diligently spread the lubricant all over the finger, and especially the tip. 

He took one last glance at his fingernails, controlling their length and shape; Brandon didn’t need to know how that detail had become Jamie’s innocent obsession over the course of last 24 hours. 

Cautiously, Jamie placed himself above Brandon, resting on his elbows to form a horizontal line with Brandon’s shoulders. 

Staring into Brandon’s eyes with a reassuring serenity, in spite of all the second-thoughts and second-guessing of his own, he brushed Brandon’s hair aside with the other hand, and then he planted a gentle, loving kiss right between Brandon’s perfectly groomed eyebrows. All the while, Brandon remained peaceful and seemingly at home with all the prospects; thus encouraged, or perhaps simply not discouraged, Jamie moved over to slowly land his hand between Brandon’s invitingly spread thighs. 

He slid his hand between Brandon’s buttocks, which indeed were still relaxed, and also soft to the touch. With his middle finger Jamie pressed his way down, examining in the process all the unique shapes and textures of that very private space, trying to remember where it was that he himself liked to be touched, and to subsequently replicate it over Brandon’s precious body. 

It wasn’t long before he arrived at the mushy spot of flesh. Using the thick layer of lubrication he still had left upon his fingertip, Jamie started to gently massage that spot. He was trying to greet it with kindness and compassion, like he was saying hello to an insecure friend – never minding that if anyone was insecure here, it was precisely Jamie.

Brandon’s muscles did seem somewhat tense, but after a moment of exploration Jamie was more or less certain that it was the trembling of arousal, and not an anxiety-caused rigidity. Deciding that the moment was as perfect as any, Jamie plunged with the tip of his finger into Brandon’s welcoming form.

The initial sensation of Brandon’s body tightly wrapping around his finger overtook Jamie with a so far unknown pleasure. He didn’t, however, take too much time to savor it, as he proceeded to spread some more lubrication on the inside, which at the same time was supposed to get Brandon used to the feeling of a stranger visiting his body. 

All the while Jamie kept track of Brandon’s face, tracing any signs of discomfort or pain. Caringly brushing Brandon’s forehead and stroking the dark blonde strands tousled upon the pillow, all that Jamie could detect, however, was Brandon giving into the moment, and into Jamie’s presence. 

Jamie waited a few more exhales on Brandon’s part to calmly slide his finger further ahead. He inched his way smoothly, gradually, with each movement pausing until Brandon relaxed, and only then did he forward. 

Then a moment came when unexpectedly Jamie was the one to find himself shudder with delight; that was when Brandon shifted his hips towards Jamie to rub his groin against Jamie’s. The sensation was feather-light, and yet perfectly enough to get Jamie’s sizzling blood to accumulate in his lower abdomen once again. 

For a couple of brief moments Jamie closed his eyes and smiled, relishing the pressure of Brandon’s body against his. He leant a little closer and placed himself astride over Brandon’s hips, allowing for their pelvic areas to fit tightly insofar as their current position allowed for that, so that they could feel each other exactly through one another’s form, structure and weight. Naturally, he was cautious not to crush Brandon, giving him an escape route should he decide he didn’t like the experience after all. Yet far from escaping, Brandon continued to brush himself against Jamie, open to and accepting of this new level of their intimacy.

Jamie’s other hand glided down to Brandon’s stomach, petting it with a supple tapping of his fingers. With Brandon’s arousal now clearly heightened, Jamie let himself move his finger deeper down into Brandon, subsequently bending it forward in a search for the sensitive bulge.

He was lucky to locate it right on the spot, and pleased to sense with his groin how Brandon thrust his own hips upward in an expression of delighted expectation. 

Tenderly massaging Brandon from the inside, he could see and hear Brandon react to his every movement, breathing slowly and deeply, groaning shyly, and clenching his fists upon the sheets as if to let out the bliss accumulating inside his body. Inspired, and within an instant way closer to abandon, Jamie pressed his pelvis against Brandon’s much more decisively, sighing in exhilaration at their bodies melting together, with his erection crawling up and down Brandon’s tender spots. 

Never stopping to knead Brandon’s touch-thirsty bulb, Jamie wrapped his other hand around Brandon’s waist and started to stroke his backbone, attempting to synchronize the rhythm of his palm with the motions of his finger. 

As he felt Brandon’s body surrender to his touch more and more fully, he gained enough confidence to pour some more lubrication onto his index finger and plunge it into Brandon to strengthen the massage.

The boost in sensations made Brandon throw his head to the side and moan straight into Jamie’s ear. And it was exactly as if the vibrating air of his voice oozed into Jamie’s bloodstream, causing Jamie’s body to respond with shivers perfectly synchronized with those vibrations.

Brandon then echoed Jamie’s motions further with a sigh and by biting his lips. Endeared and positively high on the harmony between their bodies, Jamie articulated his affection with a quick kiss on the cheek. He considered it a compromise between his own need for sugary gestures and Brandon’s wish for keeping it distant. 

And it was enough for now, or even more, much more than enough. Kissing would be redundant. Jamie went perfectly by as he reveled in keeping his face close to Brandon’s, as he felt Brandon’s heated breath wrap a veil around his ears and neck, and as he relentlessly tracked all the blinks and flutters of Brandon’s handsome face, usually so unflinching. 

Jamie carried on with the movements of his fingers, trying different curves and angles every now and then, applying varied pressure every so often. He had begun to feel quite at home inside his beloved one, and unfamiliar as this feeling was, it struck him as unexpectedly, remarkably… self-validating.

That happy fulfilled state couldn’t stand too long, however, given how it was about Jamie and his internal worry magnets. The fervor was gone once Jamie’s other hand drifted back from Brandon’s lower back to his stomach. Perceiving with his touch no bulges and curves whatsoever, Jamie peered down to confirm that all this time Brandon had still been flaccid.

This was a cold sting right into Jamie’s self-esteem, and one he refused to acknowledge. Physiologically and intellectually, he knew it all: that erection was far from being a reliable measure of the pleasure and excitement experienced by the interested party, that it could be difficult to maintain without a direct stimulation of the groin area, and, most importantly in the case of Brandon, that if you had a dysfunctional approach to your own sexuality, then reconciling intimacy with arousal was hardly possible, if at all. If Brandon wasn’t hard, it didn’t necessarily mean Jamie was not making him feel right – the physiology of human sex wasn’t all that simple, and Jamie had all the evidence to the contrary.

Or had he? 

That merciless voice within echoed somewhere in the subconscious, where Jamie wasn’t even aware it existed: _I must be doing something wrong. That was his fantasy, wasn’t it? Me inside him, that was what he really wanted. If all this doesn’t turn him on, then I must be doing it wrong. There must be something wrong with me._

And yet, for now choosing to remain oblivious of the poisonous mumblings inside his head, Jamie focused his attention on Brandon once more. He brought his lips close to Brandon’s ear as he asked calmly:

“Are you sure you want to go further?”

Brandon didn’t hesitate, not even for an instant, before he nodded his head solemnly. “It’s alright, it’s not your fault”, he reassured as he mechanically responded to Jamie’s words by moving his hand down the sheets to swiftly wrap his fingers around his own penis. “It’s just my body, it’s rotten”, he insisted with this kind of resolute, merciless judgment that had Jamie feeling sick to the bone, even more so as among the thus far undisturbed aura of peace and harmony this reminder of Brandon’s self-loathing felt so out of the blue. “Go on”, Brandon commanded then, notifying Jamie further of how little did he care about his own well-being and how little did he appreciate his own body’s need for being cherished and looked after.

The deep-seeded doubt in Jamie’s heart of hearts now had begun to sprout. Until now he had been certain they were on the right track and, in his own way and within his own range of possibilities at least, he was making Brandon feel good. Now he wasn’t so sure anymore. 

Was it really pleasure and fulfillment that Brandon was looking for in their act? Could Jamie trust what Brandon said he wanted? Could he trust the reactions, the pleas and demands from someone who had denounced his own body, that beautiful, irreplaceable, special vessel, as _rotten?_

Now what was it all about anyway? When Brandon had said he wanted Jamie’s sex, did he really mean he wanted Jamie to make him feel good? 

Because when somebody who had just gone through an ordeal which depending on the specific circumstances and the applied definitions might have as well been identified as gang rape demanded repeating the experience in no time… then there could be no talk of self-love on the part of that person, could there? So that essentially, Brandon was using Jamie just as another tool of self-flagellation, bringing home his point that he was unworthy of the respectfully blissful union that healthy sex was capable of giving.

But then Jamie remembered, _I am different. I’m better than that. I can show him. If only I can do my best, if only I try my hardest, I know that I can make it happen. I will prove to him just how much he’s worth and that I can give it all to him, because I am the one who understands. I have my compassion, I have my empathy, and I have my unwavering love for him. What else should I need? I am the right person in the right place. Nobody could take it away from me._

I can be the one.

Tuning in to his own silent self-affirming monologue, Jamie placed another gentle, comforting kiss upon Brandon’s forehead. “There’s nothing wrong with your body, so don’t talk like that”, he insisted, and at the same time he clutched Brandon’s wrist to hold it steady, letting Brandon know he didn’t need him to touch himself only to make Jamie feel better. “It doesn’t have to be stiff for you to feel the pleasure. There’s no need to push yourself.”

Brandon licked his lips in a somewhat bemusing manner, responding with an unconvinced nod – exactly the same nod he would usually give anytime Jamie said or did anything to take care of and nurture Brandon against Brandon’s apparent own wishes. Jamie had learnt enough of this not to expect anything else. Thus, he gave up on further negotiation of that issue, and instead he slid his fingers out. He did it softly and attentively, in accordance with the motions of Brandon’s muscles. 

He moved himself up and away from Brandon, used a tissue to wipe his slippery fingers, and put both the tissue and the used condom in a plastic waste bag he had earlier prepared and placed by the bedside. Next, he reached for a new condom and the tube of lubricant and sat up, shoving both into Brandon’s hand in an expectant gesture. 

Brandon gladly accepted the tools. He pulled himself closer to Jamie and unpacked the condom. His deft moves as he wrapped the prophylactic around Jamie’s erection were quite telling of his skills and practice in the area. Jamie quivered as he felt Brandon’s fingers tamper around his groin, partly because yet again he was reminded of the pressure of expectations, in his mind inseparable when getting intimate with a seasoned erotic expert such as Brandon was. Luckily, this time Jamie had few moments to spare on revolving internally whether he would live up to what was expected of him. 

Once again, he sensed Brandon’s intense and visibly pleased stare directed straight onto his erection, which deepened and hardened in response in no time. Jamie wasn’t used to having his private parts being an object of such fervent attention, and among all the flattery he had felt, it also seemed somewhat odd to him that never before had Brandon displayed so much admiration and approval towards anything related to Jamie.

Still, flattering it was indeed, with Brandon communicating nonverbally how he had found Jamie’s erection impressive, pleasant to look at and to think of. Jamie rarely thought of himself as attractive and virtually never as manly; therefore, witnessing Brandon appreciate his token of manliness made him feel confident and sexy, but at the same time, of course, red hot with that clumsy tingling of abashment, which again made him lucky not to set the sheets ablaze. 

Still sensing his cheeks burning, but in the heat of the moment paradoxically proud of who he was and how he looked nevertheless, Jamie leant against Brandon. He buried his face in Brandon’s arm, letting him know and feel exactly how hot, and in more than one ways, Brandon had made him feel. Next, Jamie playfully rubbed his chocolate brown locks against Brandon’s skin. 

It was worth it to take that quiet, cozy moment to tell Brandon a wordless ‘thank you’ for making Jamie believe in himself.

Not wanting to keep Brandon waiting forever, especially since Brandon had already been patient enough until he got close to what he wanted, Jamie finally lay on his back, looking up at Brandon with a joyful little smile, ready to surrender his all to Brandon’s wishes and desires.

Brandon took a few more seconds to scrutinize Jamie’s hardness, making the gesture seem almost maniac now. Only then did he apply some more lubricant on his hands, subsequently rubbing it all over Jamie’s erection, examining in the process its length and shape, discovering its tender points with an apt pressure of his slender fingers. 

Jamie arched his back and purred over the bliss that was taking over his body. And that was, obviously, only the beginning. Soon enough he felt Brandon’s precious weight upon his hips, Brandon’s hand still massaging his groin, before Brandon finally took him in – a sensation quite like nothing Jamie had experienced before.

It was tight, and hot, and organic, as if Brandon’s essence had seeped into Jamie’s bloodstream and from there flowed all over his body. It was also heavy and shivering, and grew with every second, in fact much faster than Jamie could adjust to. It got him short of breath and feeling rather wobbly, producing difficulties in registering what exactly was happening. It wasn’t unpleasant, far from that; what it was, however, was new – and utterly overwhelming. 

Busy making sense of the perception overload, Jamie barely realized his vision had become impaired, rendering him unable to trace Brandon’s expressions and looks. The input was exclusively sensory, and even that was quite a share to take. Still, in the back of his mind Jamie found himself taken aback at how quickly the matters had advanced.

He did know and did feel that Brandon had been relaxed, he had made sure with his own scrupulous touch that he would. But even so, was it really enough for Brandon to take him in all at once, until it made Jamie feel like he was piercing Brandon’s tender inside all the way through?

And before Jamie even had a chance to cope with all the sensory chaos, Brandon began to move, and to move Jamie along inside him. Those movements, initially slow, yet already strong and uncompromising, instantly reminded Jamie’s body of that first night they had spent together. By shifting his hips rhythmically in an almost athletic manner, Brandon would thrust Jamie deeper and deeper into himself, until it seemed he was rocking all over Jamie. 

Once Brandon had set that sequence in motion, he accelerated with almost every heartbeat. His taut buttocks pressed against Jamie’s groin so hard that Jamie now had trouble breathing literally, as in physically. It was like a huge, tense flame was covering Jamie head to toes, making him intoxicated and immobile.

Then, it all suddenly stopped. Brandon let out a distressed moan, which startled Jamie and had all the arousal, even on a purely physiological level, immediately gone. 

Jamie opened his eyes wide to see Brandon hiding his head in his hands in an unambiguous manifestation of shame. That was when Jamie knew that something had gone clearly and terribly wrong. 

It wasn’t supposed to end up like that, was it?

Before Jamie could shake off his bewilderment and react anyhow, or at least more efficiently than with a perplexed, gasped “What’s going on?”, Brandon had cowered and lain on Jamie’s chest. Among soundless sobs, which Jamie could only tell from Brandon’s trembling, Brandon clung to Jamie like a child would to their parent, terrified and ashamed while apologizing for having been such a bad boy. It puzzled Jamie to think whether this association under these specifically adult circumstances was the summit of inappropriateness, or to the contrary, a most accurate depiction of the event.

He crawled out of Brandon’s body as fast as he could, and held Brandon close to him in a virtually automatic response, while Brandon cried his tormented exclamations straight into his arm. 

“I’m sorry… I wanted it to be perfect, but I… I’m rotten, after all… I’m so sorry...”

Not that Jamie had any idea what was happening and why would Brandon berate himself like that, at least not on the logical level. And for now, rather than wonder about the reasons, he was perhaps much more concerned and confused by seeing Brandon like that. It was certainly the first time Jamie had witnessed an emotional outburst on Brandon’s part like that, as well as the first time Jamie had seen Brandon actually cry – not just shed a few tears, oozing like from a crack in a leaking tank, but actually engage his physicality into a wholesome expression of and an outlet for agony.

It was agonizing, but at the same time, in some twisted way, also relieving. Emotions were a proof of one being human, and a response like that must have implied that Brandon was being slowly drawn away from the shadows of his survival numbness and towards his own humanity.

“Come on, it’s alright, really”, Jamie reassured Brandon as he laid him on the side, constantly cradling him in his arms. “We’ve got time, right? There’s no need to rush things, we’ve got all the time that we want”, he emphasized, quite unaware of the fact that since Brandon was an addict, concepts such as ‘time’, ‘waiting’ and ‘postponing’ were quite foreign to him. “Everything’s fine, Brandon, you’ve done nothing wrong.” He cuddled him compassionately, almost unnoticeably changing his own status from a lover to a parent. “There’s nothing wrong with you, Brandon”, he insisted, realizing it would probably take a lot to have Brandon get rid of his self-hatred, even if only concerning this particular situation. “Everything’s fine, there’s nothing wrong going on”, he repeated like a mantra, holding Brandon close and trying to get him to calm down.

When Brandon was able to squeeze some more voice through the sobs, he expectedly refuted Jamie’s words of consolation. “You’re wrong, nothing’s fine”, he asserted curtly, without even looking up at Jamie. “I wanted it to be normal… You deserve _normal_ ”, he stressed like it was the most natural fact of life ever invented by the humankind.

Which it wasn’t, at least not to Jamie. What on earth was _normal_ , at least to Brandon and by Brandon’s standards? Because certainly nothing about their act from a while ago had seemed in any way abnormal to Jamie. Sure, he had got rather overpowered and done nothing while trying to work through the sensations, but he was quite convinced it was due to his zero experience and minus talent regarding sex matters. And since Brandon was so skillful, such a natural, it would never have crossed Jamie’s mind that it could be him who was doing anything wrong.

It would probably have been the easiest to ask Brandon outright whatever he meant by _normal_ , but Jamie was too concerned about alleviating Brandon’s sorrows to stop and consider his own doubts. 

So instead Jamie suggested “How about you stopping to think what it is that I want, at least for a second or two?”. As he squeezed Brandon’s hand encouragingly, he added matter-of-factly, “Of course what I want matters, too, but right now I’m asking you what it is that you want. How did you want it to be?”

For the first time since the breakdown happened, Brandon gave Jamie a look, a timid and hesitant one. “When I do it, it’s usually rough.” He made it sound like this explained everything, even though he still hadn’t answered directly to the question. 

Jamie tried not to mind and stay patient when he stroked Brandon’s palm soothingly with his thumb. “Do _you_ like it when it’s rough?”, he inquired calmly. 

Brandon pondered for a while, and then replied with a disarming honesty, “It’s only then that I can feel anything. I can’t do it any other way”.

These words rang immensely, terrifyingly sad in Jamie’s ears. Now he finally remembered who he was dealing with, and his internal romantic was forced to admit the truth was not entirely pretty. 

It was not a matter of skills in bed, a matter of experience, creativity and technique or a lack of thereof, as Jamie liked to self-consciously tell himself. Brandon was an addict, he was a sick person. He was unable to experience a mere touch, a massage, a tender stroke or a rub as anything else than a distraction. His body was so used to all sorts of sexual stimuli that he could not even find anything below a certain threshold of intensity sexual at all, precisely in the manner of an alcoholic who could not recognize any amount of alcohol in his bloodstream after just having a single low-volume shot. 

Jamie nodded his head in an acknowledgement, despite the fact how concerned these words had made him feel. So that was what Brandon had meant by _normal_. And that was why he could not get excited here with Jamie. Cuddles and strokes were simply not much of a turn-on. It was either violent, uncompromising and even physically harmful, like that orgy from a while before, or it was not sex at all. 

By no means was that an enjoyable prospect for their future sex life together.

“But you did look like you were feeling something when I was touching you”, Jamie still protested quietly, like he was trying to persuade his own self about the reality of that statement. 

Because he was aware that it might not have been exactly that kind of feeling Brandon was looking for from sex. Or worse still, as his toxic subconscious would gladly tell him, Brandon might have been faking some of his reactions so as not to hurt Jamie’s feelings, or as a means of autosuggestion to convince himself this experience was not quite as dreadful as it seemed.

Letting out an inaudible sigh, Jamie dropped his mundane worries yet again, and proceeded to look for a practical solution. “So, we can do one of three things. We can put it off for a better time and let you rest for now, or we can try again.” He paused and swallowed, unsure if the tension that overcame his body upon the mere thought of what he was going to say next implied at his own anxiety, uncertainty, embarrassment, or something yet entirely different. “Or if you want, you can…” He predictably stammered, swallowed once more, and finished quickly before he could run out of air and the guts: “I mean, you can let me do this”.

In the depths of his subconscious, Jamie was quite sure the last option wouldn’t turn out all that attractive to Brandon, and that he was mentioning it purely theoretically. He was therefore in it for a surprise, and a confusing one at that, upon hearing Brandon’s reaction.

Because Brandon sucked his breath rapidly, one could almost say gasped if gasping had not been too overtly emotional for Brandon’s ever so apathetic expression, and responded with a wide-eyed hopefulness that in Brandon’s case was practically too abstract to even start to imagine: “Would you do that?”

Jamie had no idea how he felt about that relieved eagerness on Brandon’s part. And with Jamie being a person who was more than happy to pick up on his own cheerful emotions, such as joy, anticipation, or thrill, this probably meant he was not half into that idea as Brandon seemed to be. And so he deftly repressed whatever reluctance and doubt he might have faced about it lest it should ruin their very precious and long awaited moment in bed together – or such were the terms in which Jamie would perceive that situation.

All that in spite of the fact that he was the one who had just underlined to Brandon that he should not only be concerned with what the other party wanted or needed from his sex.

In fact, Jamie was such a master repressor that he had instantly seen the brighter side of the situation. Brandon was so keen on Jamie doing it in a more active way, _ergo_ his trust in him was limitless, and he apparently also thought that Jamie made a competent lover, at least competent enough to handle the arguably more demanding position. To let Brandon down right now would mean letting himself down, and with all the time, energy and emotions Jamie had invested into that act of theirs that would have been unbearable.

“If that’s what you want”, Jamie thus agreed unsurely, having given up on any form of negotiation. “I’m not good at this, I’ve never done that before”, he informed honestly if a little redundantly, explaining himself just in case. Because when it came to _this_ , anything could go wrong. 

It was only now that somewhere in the corner of his mind Jamie had begun to realize that his initial proposal of a position in which Brandon was on top might have been caused less by a concern for Brandon’s comfort and more by Jamie’s insecurity if he could manage, and, actually, really enjoy having all the control and being the active party in all respects. 

“But I’ll do anything to make you feel good”, he assured Brandon nevertheless with a heartfelt whisper, while preparing another condom for the second attempt. 

That was when Brandon bathed him in a cold shower yet again, sending lonely shivers down Jamie’s spine.

“You don’t have to be good”, he simply asserted with his trademark aura of indifference, letting Jamie know that first, he didn’t believe so much in Jamie’s abilities after all, and second, he didn’t really care about them. The quality of sex itself or the specialness of the bond underlying it was of little interest to him. All that mattered was if the stuff was rough enough to squeeze any excitement and any kind of thrill from him.

Jamie proceeded to place himself atop of Brandon, before that vague sting of disappointment could turn into a screaming pool of hurt.

“But I want to”, he argued shyly, as if on a side note, because he knew that there were no conditions, nor any willingness on Brandon’s part, to discuss that issue any further. 

And still, it sufficed for Brandon to hold onto him and spread his legs in that unquestioning, welcoming manner to make Jamie forget all about it.

Jamie wrapped his arms around Brandon’s waist and pulled him closer, almost desperately. The sensation of Brandon’s smooth, slightly slippery skin all over his body, and Brandon’s heartbeat pounding in his chest and through their connected bodies sinking right into Jamie’s own heart, reminded Jamie in a piercing alert how strongly he really desired this beautiful man, and how achingly he was yearning for the fulfillment, for the release at one with him. And, most importantly, how lucky he was to finally have the chance to win it all. As well as the chance to be who Brandon wanted him to be, how he wanted him to be. 

A one and only chance to make a difference to both Brandon and himself.

All else was insignificant. Whining, second thoughts and negativity would not only be not right, they would also be infinitely stupid. Jamie would never forgive himself if any of those made him relish that gracious moment any less. 

***

It wasn’t half as bad as it might have been. Actually, quite a few things about it had been enjoyable at the very least, and some of them even exquisite. 

The pressure of Brandon’s body, its tightness, its heat were all amazing, and unlike the previous attempt, Jamie was able to regulate any of those with his own dynamics or a lack of it. Yes, control did have its assets, and while Jamie could not explore them right now to a greater degree due to his own self-consciousness and an excessive concern for Brandon’s benefit, he found himself rather looking forward to repeating the experience and learning some more.

The sensations would have been downright astonishing, had Jamie taken some proper time to live them. He was somewhat aware, however, that his body had been numbed to the nicest parts of the experience due to his fear of failure, subdued and yet inherently real. 

There had been so many things to be afraid of, after all. He might have hurt Brandon – by picking the wrong angle, by going too fast, by going too deep. Someone else’s body was definitely not something to be tampered with, and the fact that Jamie wasn’t in the least turned on by having someone’s vulnerability at his command perhaps testified better than anything how unsuited Jamie was for an active role in the intercourse. And naturally, Brandon being Brandon wouldn’t let Jamie know if there was anything wrong – he had made it clear, after all, that he was more into pain than into not feeling at all, or feeling too vaguely.

And so Jamie ended up hooked up on tuning himself to all the micro-signs that Brandon’s flesh, muscles, nerves or expressions would give him. That was really one of the great points about this position – Jamie could see Brandon’s face well. He could look into his eyes and appropriately react to whatever Brandon had shown him. 

Then again, exactly that part was also its downside, because of how blank Brandon’s face looked all the while. It made Jamie internally wince with nervousness and embarrassment, and bury his face in Brandon’s sandy strands of hair. 

Well, apparently he still had to take some more time until he could find the way to give Brandon the strong pleasure he wanted without inflicting any pain on him.

Then there had also been the risk of Jamie not performing well. Jamie was painfully aware of how his fear of ridiculing himself may have led straight to just that – to ridiculing himself, and so he tried as he might to keep his insecurities in check. Anything could have happened: he could have finished too fast, or he could have not finished at all due to being unable to keep it hard and going for as long as Brandon needed. Or he could have simply had no idea how to do the thrusting job so that it was pleasurable and exciting (to Brandon, obviously). In this respect, it actually almost served Jamie that he had ignored most of his own internal states in favor of adjusting to Brandon’s responses and imagined needs: in so doing, he involuntarily prevented his own fears from flooding him and influencing him physically.

All in all, the consideration about Brandon was quite a load to cope with, and it was sufficient to distract Jamie from his own body and most of the things that were happening to it. He was particular about each and every move that he made, infusing every single one with what he intended to be an embodiment of tenderness and gentle sensuality. 

Brandon had wrapped his arms around Jamie, squeezing his fingers upon Jamie’s back every time, as Jamie would guess, Jamie made him feel something he liked. Other than swinging his hips ever so slightly and rubbing his still soft groin against Jamie’s stomach in the process, he wasn’t overly reactive, passively taking in all that Jamie had to offer, much like it had been with Jamie’s fingers, too.

This behavior was so remarkably different from what Brandon was used to doing in bed, as far as Jamie could assume and also from the little that he had experienced himself, that it occurred to Jamie that maybe that was Brandon’s way to try to distinguish between his usual unhealthy sex practices and what they were doing together right now. It was as if Brandon intended not to mix Jamie and their relationship with the self-declared _dirty stuff_ he would engage in on a daily basis. Jamie appreciated the effort, and this thought had also allowed him to see Brandon’s physical detachment in a different light. 

If this sex was so unlike anything Brandon was accustomed to, and his personal preferences involved things getting rough, even brutal, out of control and too intense to handle, it must have been only natural that neither he nor his body knew how to feel this kind of touch, or this kind of togetherness and oneness. He gave up some of his key appetites out of respect for Jamie (or more likely out of fear and shame what Jamie would think of him if he showed him what kind of sex he really liked, but who cared?), and in return Jamie could do nothing but respect him back.

Ultimately, however, Brandon gave up the fight against his well-trained instincts, and ended up murmuring a hoarse single-word command into Jamie’s ear.

“Harder!” 

Jamie was hit by a mixture of desire – there was something undeniably seductive and arousing about this kind of straightforward, demanding instructions, something that made you feel really hot and in control – and letdown.

Apparently his personal idea of doing this wasn’t good enough for Brandon after all, or really enough to make him _feel at all_.

But nevertheless, ever obedient to Brandon’s wishes, Jamie grabbed Brandon by the hand, clasped tenderly, and let go of his control, letting his hips run loose as he thought Brandon expected him to.

The sensation was stunning, virtually staggering, and by all means luscious, and yet in some funny way it made Jamie feel more disconnected from Brandon than ever, at least in terms of that evening. 

The sensation when Jamie came was like a quivering implosion of his own blood and muscles onto him. It made him collapse almost uncontrollably, sliding down on Brandon and pressing upon him for a while. He was dizzy, short of breath, and rather unsure of what exactly was happening inside him.

As soon as he recovered, Jamie pulled himself up to get off of Brandon. He lay by Brandon’s side, still holding an arm around his waist, and caringly brushed back his slightly sticky hair from his forehead. 

Brandon looked tired, but completely normal – he usually seemed like he was running on a very low battery of vital energy anyway. As he took on a more comfortable position, he was, again, amazingly composed. His breath was already more steady than not, his muscles seemed relaxed and laid back. Only his shapely, lean body was sprinkled with tiny sweat drops shining in the mellow dimness of the bedside lamp. 

Looking further down, Jamie discovered what he had already been suspecting: Brandon’s body revealed no traces of climax. Jamie couldn’t help but wonder if all this had given him any pleasure at all.

Why had he even bothered to go all these lengths in first place?

“Are you alright?”, Jamie asked as if Brandon had just gone through a medical procedure rather than had simply had sex.

“Yes, I am”, Brandon confirmed plainly, making Jamie breathe out in relief. Probably unaware of that, Brandon proceeded to inquire, “How about you?”

Jamie smiled and shook his head to represent his amazement at what had just happened between the two of them. “I’m wonderful.” 

He wasn’t lying; it was what he sincerely believed he felt right now and how he had perceived the whole experience. It was funny how just one remotely positive comment and an equally remote sign of interest from Brandon had had Jamie change his perspective completely and forget all the doubt, insecurity, self-consciousness and the like. It was as if those several minutes between them had been rewritten from the get-go. 

With a thus renewed spirit, Jamie undid what seemed to him the remnants of their distance by resting his forehead against Brandon’s. Then, peeking down on his own groin, he asked coyly, with a playfulness that he thought would be on Brandon’s terms: “So… how was it? I hope it didn’t let you down”.

Brandon reciprocated with a sly, self-satisfied smile. “No, it didn’t”, he retorted, making Jamie blush ever so slightly. And before Jamie could even get over how emotionally well Brandon had reacted to this amusing adjustment of the atmosphere, Brandon surprised him even more as he moved himself closer and clung to Jamie, a rare initiative for that evening by far. “Thank you”, he murmured with a sigh.

Glad to hold Brandon back, Jamie replied with a simple “You’re welcome” and stroked Brandon’s hair. Next, he added a specifying question, “And what exactly are you thanking me for?”. It wasn’t like he genuinely had no clue, but he was indeed interested in the particulars. And, obviously, after this very intense and at times emotionally wracking time, he also was rather keen on hearing some nice things about himself.

On moments like these Jamie still happened to fail to take into consideration that Brandon was being Brandon and wasn’t going to go into any details to help Jamie understand, or simply feel better about himself.

“For doing this for me”, he indicated sparingly. He could have meant anything, but apparently he was pointing at Jamie agreeing to have sex with him in that more active position than initially attempted. Jamie bit his lips, partly in helplessness at Brandon’s vague ways of expression, and partly in uneasiness at his own confused recollection of why and how he had come to yield to Brandon’s wishes.

“I was afraid”, he admitted eventually. “I wasn’t sure if I wouldn’t hurt you, or if you really wanted that. But…” He cheered up and leant closer to Brandon to confess earnestly, “but I did want that myself, a lot, you know? And that helped, because I desired you so much”. He had wrung all that he possibly could from whatever would constitute his nerve to afford this kind of declaration, and so he subsequently hid his face in Brandon’s arm, embarrassed and exhausted, his face predictably burning.

Brandon accepted this with a light sassy smile, almost a smirk. “Well, that’s good, isn’t that the way it should be?”, he teased in that nonchalant timbre of his, getting Jamie’s cheeks to scorch even more. Not that Jamie wouldn’t enjoy that sensation.

“I’d like to give you so much more”, he stressed, looking up to stare into Brandon’s eyes. “And if I can learn your body better, I think that even I can be… you know, alright.” 

As of then, Jamie still hadn’t got rid of the habit to imply at his own defects and unconsciously count on Brandon to deny them and make him feel better about himself. This kind of coquetry, naturally, never paid off, as Brandon never quite followed through. 

And neither did he now. 

“Well, it was only the first time.” Well-meaning as Brandon probably was, it didn’t sound like much of a flattery to someone who had secretly dreamt of hearing just how fantastic he had done, after all the efforts and discomfort this had put him through.

Ever so keen on seeing the glass half full, at least when it came to Brandon, Jamie was quick, however, to focus on the brighter side of what Brandon had just said.

“So… does this mean there’s going to be more of this…?” He did feel awkward inquiring about that, but his eyes couldn’t help the sparkle of excitement and the promise of future fulfillment. 

Brandon nodded in a very Brandon-typical way.

“Yeah, if you want to.”

“I do!” Jamie exclaimed hardly had Brandon finished uttering his not too lengthy line – it was like in one of those buzz TV game shows when a player, confident of their answer, would press the buzz button even before the question had been finished reading. Upon hearing his own overzealousness like that, Jamie almost collapsed under all the disconcertion. He coughed, chuckled and cuddled Brandon close as he added: “Did that sound too pushy?”.

Brandon remained classically unaffected. “It sounded alright to me”, he claimed, again, with all his trademark ignorance. Jamie couldn’t help a smooth, heartfelt laugh.

Indeed, in the end everything did sound alright. The first step was always the one most challenging to take, and they had succeeded doing that just fine. 

There was still time, plenty of time to learn, to appreciate, to heal, and, most importantly, to love. 

And in that one special moment of peace, Jamie felt himself ready for all this. Certainly, there would be ups and downs, hopes, fears and second-thoughts, just like there had been that evening – but Jamie was so sure that he… that they could handle it.

Each attempt from now on would turn out, without a doubt, easier and better. And each such occasion would bring them closer to what Jamie had dreamt of: a relationship that was committed and complete, and a trusting, loving bond he could come home to.

He really was in love with Brandon. And what it came down to was that he really wanted to make it all work. Badly. With his all.


	2. July: Get back to summer paradise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Weeks go by and Jamie is trying his best to make sense of the new status of him and Brandon as a couple. Things have never been exactly rosy for the two of them, but as time passes and reality creeps up, their unresolved issues begin to take their toll on the fragile relationship.

As days turned into weeks and the summer heat took over the city with its steamy embrace, being with Brandon and sharing each day with him had begun to seem deceptively routine to Jamie. 

The deception was all about pretended stability, and it effectively covered up the fact that theirs were the circumstances that remained far from ordinary, with so many questions left unanswered and some even left unasked. 

In the back of his mind, Jamie was aware that this couldn’t last too long, not if he wanted to keep it functional – which he did, or at least he was positive he did. There was the problem of Brandon’s job, and there was the matter of his therapy. Both hung in the air more and more thickly as time passed by, but for quite some time remained immaterialized with Jamie unable to find the courage to put them into words. And there were also loads of minor other issues between them, at times too trifling to even name them, but still meaningful enough to make Jamie feel powerless and faced up against the wall.

The brilliant days intertwined with the meager ones. At one time Jamie would feel very close to and at peace with Brandon, at other Brandon would seem like a total stranger who somehow just had happened to land under the same roof. True, since Brandon came to live with him it had always been this way… only it seemed to have had less relevance and less weight upon Jamie until sex and being a sort of an _actual couple_ entered the picture. 

And that was just about the internal issues between Jamie and Brandon. There was, however, an outside world too, as much as Jamie wanted to forget all about it at times. There was Jamie’s family whom he called every once in a while to blatantly answer with an “u-huh, alright, I guess, nothing new” to all the how-are-yous and how-you’re-doings he would be addressed with. There were also his friends whom he had been carefully trying not to invite over for the past few months, because he was so certain he didn’t want them to realize he was living now with a man. Not to mention Jessie, who was apparently resentful now anyway after Jamie talked himself out of coming to Javier’s birthday party. As an estimated result, Jessie hadn’t contacted Jamie since, with Jamie on his part obviously not inclined to take the initiative and make a move himself.

Whatever it was about his pairing with Brandon that Jamie was so insistent on keeping away from the world’s eyes? In their early days together, when there had been little to no relationship going on between the two of them and Brandon really treated his staying at Jamie’s place like a cheap guestroom offer, at least Jamie’s excuse for keeping it secret wasn’t that bad. Nobody in their sane mind and caring about Jamie (or claiming to care about Jamie, as Jamie’s mistrustful inner self would maliciously twist it) would simply nod and accept that Jamie essentially sheltered some suspicious, unstable dude with issues, without knowing a thing about him or getting anything in return for his generosity. But at the time Jamie was happy with how things worked, so he wanted them to stay that way, with nobody to interfere with that tricky, claustrophobic world for two that he had built. 

Still, now things were different. Jamie’s apartment wasn’t a mere shelter to Brandon anymore; in a sense it had become his home. His only real home. The place to come back to and the place to wait for someone to come back. He shared Jamie’s days and nights, Jamie’s bath tub, and of course Jamie’s bed. They were a couple now, or at least striving to be one. Staying the claustrophobic way, and keeping all the ties with the outer world severed, was one of the most unhealthy things they could do to their relationship at that stage.

At least that was what Jamie’s voice of reason kept telling him every time he found himself yet again maneuvering and juggling pathetic excuses just to keep his close ones away from his apartment and the everyday circumstances of his private life, as if Brandon had been some kind of shameful secret. Why? Why would he do that? Didn’t all his friends wish him all the best and want him to reenter his own love life at last? And wasn’t he proud of Brandon, didn’t he want to let the whole world know how lucky he was to have this special, exquisite man right at his side? 

Every now and then a dark, ominous echo at the back of Jamie’s head whispered answers that he didn’t even want to hear, much less consider. These whispers, hastily repressed way down to the subconscious, now had him freeze, now squirm. 

_No, you’re not really proud of him. He’s quite a catch, but he’s not for the likes of you. Don’t you know? He’s only here for the time being, for as long as he finds you convenient. What’s there to brag about? Your people will know that, and they will let you know. “What were you thinking, Marshall? This guy’s using you. Can’t you keep around one who isn’t?”, they’ll tell you. And you’ll know that you can’t. You’ll know that you won’t. You can’t afford it. You’re just not good enough, and everyone will see it then. That’s why it’s best to keep it to yourself. What’s unspoken can’t hurt you._

So, while on the surface their status and their relationship may have changed a lot, it hadn’t changed that much inside Jamie. He was still in his same old double bind: _I want to know I’m worthwhile, so I have to be needed. But if I’m needed, then he’s only here because he needs me, and not because he appreciates me. Once he’s done needing me, or once I’m done giving him it all, he’ll be gone in no time. And I’ll be alone, all over again._

Without Jamie even realizing – without him letting himself realize that – he was beginning to breathe the old, familiar toxic air of mistrust. It was so familiar he couldn’t tell it apart from his own flesh and blood. Or maybe he had never really stopped breathing it, not since Jessie left him, not since he got together with Jessie, or maybe not since he was just a kid? Those delightful times when the poison didn’t get to him could have simply been the times when he was standing by the window. And he couldn’t tell the difference once the window had been shut. 

He couldn’t, but his soul could, and did. The cold sting of shame had started to spread its poison.

***

It was certainly a lovely thing to live with Brandon like that, to share a single moment and a single day at a time, just enjoying the bliss, no questions asked on where it was headed. Sure, it was not all hearts and butterflies as Jamie would have dreamt in his perfect romance – but why expect perfection when you had Brandon? Brandon was definitely far from perfect, but still so much more than Jamie would ask for. 

So Brandon’s communication skills had not verifiably improved, and Jamie’s level of proficiency in communication with Brandon hadn’t advanced for quite some time now, either. This was sometimes merely clumsy, and sometimes rather unsettling, but Jamie knew better than to bother. It was life and living people they were dealing with after all, not some Prince Charming fairytale. And anyway, it had been clear all along that Brandon wasn’t the expressive, pensive, thought-and-soul-sharing type, and Jamie really didn’t expect him to change and become more like him just because they slept together now. Not that Jamie was some kind of narcissist to wish for his lover to be more like himself in the first place. It was in their differences that lay a large part of their attraction and the merit of their relationship.

That being said, Jamie couldn’t help feeling somewhat disappointed and a little empty inside every time they broke off into an awkward silence when Jamie was trying to have a meaningful conversation about something that mattered to him. This typically happened, for example, after Jamie showed Brandon one of his favorite movies, and upon turning to Brandon with an all-stirred, all caught-up inquiry of “So, how did you like it?”, Brandon would give him that disinterested look and respond with a professionally bland “alright, I guess”. The same applied when Jamie shared some news which had him deeply agitated and Brandon responded with his expert so-what gaze and rarely, on better days only, with a commonplace comment along the lines of “well, that sounds like quite something”. 

This also happened, quite painfully for Jamie, the evening when Jamie decided it would be a great idea to read some of his favorite romantic/erotic poetry to Brandon. Poetry had had a huge impact on Jamie’s life; he was an avid reader, he also created some from time to time (and subsequently stored it in a carefully locked bedside drawer), and back at school he was quite active and accomplished in recitation. To Jamie poetry was an outlet for his emotions, and conversely, a map of how to perceive the world, both outer and inner; a reflection of the objective reality as well as a mirror of his inner truth, and a fresh new prism through which to see that truth. Essentially, poetry helped him express himself, understand himself better, feel all the more human and at the same time, all the more himself. To share it with Brandon was a very personal act to him, one that required plenty of courage, and a confidence that he did want to be known by Brandon like that. 

Brandon, however, didn’t seem to appreciate that. Maybe Jamie was too inept at getting his point across. Maybe he was being too over-the-top with those self-awed interpretations to be taken seriously, or conversely, maybe he was being too reticent and distant to make any lasting impression. Or maybe Brandon simply wasn’t into this kind of things and nothing that Jamie would say or do could sparkle his interest. Not even the prospect of getting to know Jamie better and achieving another level of closeness. And so he was consistent in his coldly polite responses along the lines of “yeah, well, I don’t know that much about all this poetry stuff” each time a very emotional Jamie poured all his heart into interpreting a piece and then attempted to elicit any kind of reaction from him.

And on an intellectual level, Jamie really understood it all, and thought he was… he should be okay with it all, too. It was alright to differ, alright to be moved by different things and in a different way. They weren’t each others’ carbon copies and that was fine, or actually even healthy. 

Still, deep down inside Jamie couldn’t think of this situation much more than as his failure. Or perhaps of himself as a failure, unless it wasn’t one and the same. 

Because it hurt to think that what he considered to be his own essence, the core of who he was and how he perceived the world, the one person whose opinion he cared about the most found boring, sappy, and unworthy of any discussion. 

And if it wasn’t enough, that exact kind of hurt wasn’t unfamiliar, too. Because even though until a certain point Jessie had been supportive of the sensitive, lyrical side of Jamie’s inner world and even seemed somehow enticed by it, over time this died down, replaced with disinterested dismissal disguised as friendly banter. Consequently, seeing now Brandon respond in a different, yet uncomfortably similar way revoked in Jamie a handful of undesired memories.

Such examples of miscommunication, or unsatisfactory communication between Jamie and Brandon, piled up every few days. Jamie, however, brushed all that off relatively easily and wouldn’t let it discourage him. It wasn’t some unrealistic ideal he was hoping for, and he was fully aware, as he liked to tell himself, what they had right now was the best bargain he could get. And quite a bargain it was indeed. Barely a couple of weeks earlier he wouldn’t have dared to imagine things could turn out for them that way. 

To think that the other memorable night Brandon had told Jamie with such unyielding confidence “I don’t want to sleep with you anymore” (actually he didn’t literally say the words, because it was Jamie who elicited them instead, but to Jamie the effect was one and the same), and now they had their loving and lovely sex, their bed, their bath tub, their cats and hamsters… an actual life together! It was such an amazing turn that Jamie still couldn’t believe his luck. It would be shamelessly arrogant to ask for any more.

Especially since Brandon was already doing his best. He, too, was trying in his own way to make this work, and he gave it the best he could for the time being. Jamie knew that and had confidence in him – in them. He had confidence in the two of them aiming for the same thing.

Their sex life in general supported that optimistic view. It wasn’t all just about going to bed, really – it extended to the way they were with each other and behaved towards one another on a daily basis. It was in the way they shared the space of Jamie’s (or should Jamie say, their?) apartment, all of it, not just the bedroom, and in the way they experienced and expressed their closeness. It wasn’t now what it had used to be, something definite had changed. And it suited Jamie’s taste just fine.

They had those reassuring, comforting rituals, such as their shared bath time. Ever since that evening Brandon came back home, bathing had become their safe area of togetherness, of simply being with each other, appreciating each other without getting worked up, heated up, or anxious about anything. Sex would always be somewhere in the background as a soon-to-be prospect, but Jamie paid no attention to it and, he presumed, neither did Brandon. Bathing together, enjoying the warmth of the water and of each other’s skin, inhaling the steam and each other’s breaths, allowing another close enough to clean you, massage you, spoil you with his touch, simply put to take care of you and cherish you – it was all a means to be sensual, almost spiritual, without the risky excitement and all its traps that sexual arousal oftentimes meant.

Jamie still had no idea how it worked, but it always did, just like the first time. Their bath was a kind of a sanctuary within which sexual drive and impulsive urges would subside. It occurred naturally and there was never any struggle on Jamie’s part. It wasn’t like in this setting he suddenly stopped finding Brandon attractive or like his senses became numb, in fact it was quite the contrary – he would become all the more sensitive to and aware of Brandon’s physical beauty . Nevertheless, Jamie’s body somehow seemed to have memorized that simple relation: bath meant no sex. 

And Jamie liked it like that. It made sense. It was delightful. And, above all, it was only theirs, and it was special.

There was more to their shared sensuality than just baths. There were those small gestures of kindness that let Jamie know that Brandon did care after all – making him dinner and those slowfood-certified salads Jamie would take to work for lunch, ironing his shirts and arranging them in the wardrobe so that they looked like a menswear shop display, looking after his (their) pets. 

There were also the innocuous enough yet irresistible, titillating signals that Brandon would give out of his own initiative, letting Jamie know that he was ready to go. 

A gentle massage of the neck and shoulders, started out of the blue as Jamie was sitting in his study chair, tired and worn out after a really long day. The touch of Brandon’s slender fingers which seemed to leave scorching traces on Jamie’s pale skin. The sudden rush of blood crushing against Jamie’s temples, and the sour taste of saliva filling up his throat. The wave of desire taking Jamie over suddenly, and taking no hostages.

Or, at other times, Brandon’s hand so casually landing upon Jamie’s knee as they were resting together on the sofa, engaging in separate activities, such as Jamie reading and Brandon checking some stuff over the internet. Then the unexpected sensation of Brandon’s fingers crawling up Jamie’s thigh, and Jamie was frozen with the flames. A fantasy would instantly flood Jamie’s body and mind, a fantasy of melting into one with Brandon right then, right there.

That blazing urge was so instant and so overwhelming that it was hardly bearable, and it seemed like it would rip Jamie’s body apart. And still, at the same time it was exhilarating, invigorating, really restorative. It made Jamie feel alive. Alive in a way he never thought he was capable of experiencing.

He did realize that on such occasions he was not allowed to be himself in an unrestrained way. He always had that itching awareness underneath the thin layer of his consciousness that he was always treading on a shaky ground – that he was always one step away from turning Brandon off, driving him away, making him feel scared, disgusted and unsafe. 

So, Jamie had to be on guard and couldn’t give into his impulses as much as he would love to. He had to put aside his vision of pulling Brandon close and kissing him passionately until they both ran out of breath and merged; for now, the vivid memory of what Brandon’s lips had felt and tasted like that first and only time Brandon allowed him that close while they still were strangers had to suffice. 

And far from complaining, Jamie enjoyed those moments of their impromptu intimacy with his whole being. Even with those inner struggles not to hurt or discourage Brandon, Jamie was incessantly taken over with the rapture of being bewitched by Brandon, and he delighted in this clear confirmation that Brandon yearned for him, maybe even desired him?, the way Jamie yearned for Brandon.

On the other hand, however, it wasn’t all quite that tailor-made fantasy come true that Jamie had envisioned it to be. And it was particularly, sharply evident every time they went all the way – which Brandon usually insisted they would. 

First of all and contrary to Jamie’s expectations, it wasn’t exactly that it got easier after the first time. Jamie still found himself rather ill-suited for being the top. His lack of experience and spontaneity in sensual self-expression led him to constantly second-guessing and questioning every inch and every second of their bedroom setting. Was he doing it well? What kind of reaction should he expect from Brandon to know if he was doing it well? Or should that be obvious? Was he ridiculing himself by even wondering about such things rather than simply knowing it all, simply getting it right? 

This avalanche of self-doubt sunk Jamie’s confidence even deeper and, predictably, led to even less spontaneity and more anxiety on his part, providing him with what he considered legitimate reasons to question whether Brandon had any actual reasons to stick around in bed with him, other than a kind of boredom masochism. Watching from this perspective, Jamie couldn’t be surprised at Brandon’s consistent inability to get hard while intimate with him. Even though Brandon insisted that it had nothing to do with Jamie and Jamie shouldn’t worry about that, and even though Jamie was aware that from a physiological standpoint Brandon was probably right, he still had a hard time believing everything was fine and their sex satisfied Brandon. Rather, each time they tried this Jamie would come to believe that his sex sucked, not in a good way, and that Brandon went to bed with him out of pity, sympathy, or as a form of payment for Jamie taking decent care of him otherwise.

Each time they made out to an effect Jamie was skeptical of, Jamie’s head would become full of obsessive thoughts of what he’d done wrong and how he could improve on that. He reacted to those concerns in his usual way, like he would react to most other things he deeply cared about and wanted badly to get right: he got all caught up in research. 

He thus surfed a number of relevant websites and got himself a few books on the topic of discovering and exploring one’s own sexuality. He got down to the study in his typical diligent and reflective manner, and with each paragraph he seemed to himself that much wiser and more informed, like something had finally clicked and awarded him with a systemic revelation of what those previously incomprehensible things were about. 

The problem with Jamie’s studious attitude was, however, that the stream of confidence that his newly-acquired knowledge had planted inside him would go Sahara dry the moment he lay together with Brandon. Maybe it was precisely because it was knowledge and not feeling, so that the said stream was all locked up inside Jamie’s head instead of spreading all over his body – and, needless to say, it was the response of the body that counted in bed, as there was no time to wait until you could access appropriate data as stored inside your mind. Anyway, the result was that on each such occasion, Jamie felt like during a school test taken with a worrisome awareness that he had begun to study for the test too late and had tried to remember too much over too little time, with a total blank being the ultimate effect of all the commotion. All his busy data collection seemed to be in vain if he always ended up falling into same old patterns, lifeless and self-conscious, heavy on him and, he could bet, no fun for Brandon. 

Over-thinking, like any other kind of ‘over’, certainly wasn’t the best thing that could happen to anyone and any cause, in bed and elsewhere. And this one had some specific consequences to Jamie. Obviously, the more tangled he got inside his head, the more out of touch he would become – quite literally, and pertaining to both his and Brandon’s body. He wasn’t all that present – how could he when what he did was mostly panicking that he wouldn’t get it right, or bashing himself when he had done something he considered an embarrassment and plain unbelievable? 

_But seriously, what’s wrong with me?_ , Jamie would ask himself every now and then after he had touched Brandon in a way that seemed to him inexplicably awkward, or, to the contrary, paused for a moment or two that felt like a clumsy eternity, because he was so hesitant about what to do next, how to please Brandon and how to give him all he deserved. How did he even get about to pleasing someone like Brandon? He attempted to observe Brandon closely and get some kind of telepathic feedback, which wasn’t all that effective – and for a reason: after all, fractions of seconds in the midst of the carnal heat weren’t the best setting for a detailed multiple-port input analysis. 

Jamie, however, had his own explanation, his own firm take on the situation: he was too lame to even please a random average guy, so how could he imagine to succeed with someone _that_ experienced and _that_ refined? _Why do I even bother? Why keep trying to make an idiot out of myself?_ , his thoughts would spin as he went through his increasingly half-hearted motions. He also realized that was a really ironic case of self-fulfilling prophecy: the more he overreacted, the more absorbed he was with what was going on inside his head, and the less attention he could devote to Brandon, to an inevitable effect of Brandon remaining under-caressed and not taken enough care of. _It’s no wonder he can’t get it stiff_. 

In flashbacks, quick and sharp like a steel-cold blade, Jamie would remember that one night of his life he desperately wanted to wipe out of his memories, usually to quite a decent effect; that single night that convinced him once and for all that one night stands were simply the worst choice possible for him. The sneering voice of that guy he had met an hour or two before, echoing inside his head with “Are you sure you’ve ever done that before?”.

The worst part of it was that Jamie knew the hunk had been justified in his being so blatant. Jamie really was _that bad_. 

And now Brandon had to find out about that first-handedly. Brandon, the one person in the world Jamie wished to satisfy…and to impress the most.

They didn’t have to wait too long for the results of Jamie’s overdone thinking. And it ended up in one of the most humiliating ways Jamie could have imagined.

His body was very sensitive to stimulation, not to mention Brandon’s presence, so he didn’t have much trouble getting an erection even with all the background concerns. There came an occasion when all the stress, the hyper-vigilance and inordinate anxiety had, however, taken a swift toll on his body, to the effect that as soon as he slid himself into Brandon by as little as an inch or two, overcome with the sudden pressure on his tender parts, within barely a couple of seconds he was finished. 

It happened too fast for Jamie to see it coming (no pun intended), so it would be safe to assume that he was surprised by the outcome much more than Brandon – after all, Brandon had been the target of that sorry excuse of making out all the while, and so he must have expected how it would turn out. There was absolutely nothing about the way Jamie did it that would indicate he had any control of his own reactions; that lack of control had been mirrored in his artless, embarrassingly inept handling of his lover’s body directly prior to the incident. 

Anyway, once it did happen and once Jamie did realize what he had done, his whole body suddenly felt blocked and heavy, like it had been made of stone. In a way he was paralyzed: frozen, forgetting to breathe, unable to collect his thoughts. 

A few seconds had passed until Jamie’s eyes met Brandon’s; that jade gaze was jaded as always, perhaps a bit surprised, but revealing no more emotion than just that. It might as well have been mockery, something along the lines of _Oh well, what could you expect, it’s that sorry dork after all_ , or a stoic _Yeah well, it wasn’t a matter of ‘if’ but of ‘how long until’, I could tell that all along_.

These projections backed up Jamie’s realization of what had happened, wrapping him in a thick, toxic cloud of shame. 

Still petrified and like in slow-motion, Jamie swayed to the side and pulled away from Brandon. 

Sitting up by the wall and pulling his knees up to his chin, he felt totally void on the inside, like there was a huge whirlwind raging along with the strong, heavy, deliberate thuds of his heartbeat.

 _What have I done?_ His thoughts, initially sluggish and stupor-like, second by second gained clarity and momentum, relentless and scathing. _What the fuck have I done? I’ve fucked up, fucked up so, so hard_. He cowered and buried his head behind his elbows, his sweaty chocolate brown curls sticking to his wrists and forearms. _And now he knows_. He had no courage to even peek at Brandon from the side; it was painful enough to remember Brandon was still there, to be aware of his presence and to imagine what was going through his head right then. _He knows what a fake I am. He knows I’ve been a fake all along. Like some damn naïve brat pretending to be a real man. He knows I’m useless. He has no idea now why he’s ever thought of even trying to have sex with me. He’s never going to have any idea. He’s going to feel so sorry for himself. I must feel like such a fucking mistake to him now_.

The tension in Jamie’s chest extending up to his throat was so huge it almost made him choke on the apprehension.

After a while, like from behind the wall, Brandon’s aloof, but certainly not cold voice reached Jamie’s ears.

“Well, these things can happen. That’s okay.”

A part of Jamie was touched by these default words of reassurance, but the best of him was still numbed with the humiliation.

“Look, I appreciate your being so supportive, but I know this isn’t what you’ve expected.” He pulled up a blanket to cover his body waist down, suddenly desperate about not letting Brandon look at him anymore. His own body seemed to him so laughable and worthless right now that there was no way he could bear the exposure. “I’m sorry”, he resumed after a pause, doing his best to collect himself. Brandon was just trying to be kind, after all, and Jamie had already let him down. It would have been unfair to make a scene and indulge in self-pity, not to mention degrading to Jamie himself and making things all the more ridiculous than they already had been. “Please, give me just a moment, okay?”, he muttered at his bravest, fighting away the hot flood coming up to his eyes. 

If anything, however, rather than angry, irritated or disappointed, Brandon was confused at the intensity of Jamie’s reaction, and the depth of misery that he displayed. 

“But it’s alright, really”. A bit of surprise had sneaked into Brandon’s usual mechanic tone, revealing that he genuinely had no idea what the big deal was. “I guess this should mean that I’m turning you on, huh?” 

Wiping the corners of his eyes with the back of his hand in a subdued gesture, Jamie gave Brandon an apathetic, given-up look. “Yes, it does”, he admitted joylessly, squeezing every single sound through his throat as if he had been caught on something to be ashamed of, something that was too huge for him to handle and so terribly out of his league. 

Brandon responded to that with a stance which struck Jamie as quite stunning.

“Well, that’s rather cute.”

For a while, Jamie stayed motionless. At first he didn’t even realize that Brandon had said anything substantial; once he had, he had trouble processing that one simple line, quite sure he must have misheard it, that it was just some kind of tune from his internal wish list inside his head.

But as he looked up at Brandon shyly with his still slightly dampened eyes, Brandon’s gaze and posture exuded confidence and conviction. There were traces of warmth in his stare, there was some sort of endearment. It was such a rare sight that even with his skepticism Jamie could recognize it really was there. 

And he believed what he saw.

He sighed as if to shake off the misery from the inside of his lungs. With this much weight relieved, he could respond to Brandon’s warm stare with a smile. It was a trademark Jamie smile, timid, and yet captivating in its innocence and insecurity, with its absolute lack of appreciation how lovable it was. “Seriously?”

“Seriously”, confirmed Brandon, resting his back against the wall at his side of the bed. “That’s nothing to worry about. Perhaps you’ve been pushing yourself too hard at work, or something like that. Such things can happen. Anyway, you really shouldn’t beat yourself up about it.” 

Jamie sighed once again, as for a moment he found himself preoccupied with Brandon’s rationalization rather than with the overall consoling message of his words. “Or perhaps it’s just that I’m lame at this”, he countered with a stubborn shade of inferiority feelings. He was, however, quick to lighten up as he faced Brandon with a broader smile, as if to tell him _lame or not, I can live with it if you can_. 

He managed to catch Brandon’s eyes, incessantly calm and uncomplaining. He could feel the trust, a while before blown to the ground like a house of cards, and now steadily building up back inside him. It was like he was coming back from a long journey; from a desolate, menacing outer space of shame and humiliation where everything screamed about him being inadequate, unmanly and a failure, back to the safe world of the bed he shared with someone who genuinely appreciated him, or at least tried his best to learn how to. 

“You’re definitely not lame, I can tell this much”, responded Brandon lightheartedly, with his trademark deadpan flirtatiousness. He was plenty of a charmer whenever he was like that, and Jamie made quite an investment in giving that charm a benefit of doubt right now. 

So maybe, after all, it really was in his head?, he wondered as he drew himself closer to Brandon. Maybe he had really got too worked up, while looking from Brandon’s perspective, sex with him wasn’t half bad. Maybe Jamie simply had a hard time imagining Brandon could enjoy it because he so sincerely doubted anyone would. 

“Are you serious?”, he typically asked Brandon for a confirmation yet again, but this time it was less of an expression of disbelief and more of a display of where he had come from, a shortcut way to convey the message of _Look, I’ve always considered myself defective, so it’s rather challenging for me to trust now that someone like you could actually fancy being in bed with me_. 

He wrapped his arms around Brandon to show him how trustful he was, and ready to bring down his walls once again. 

“I am very serious.” In accordance with the face value of his words and contrary to their subject matter, there wasn’t even a trace of a curve at the corners of Brandon’s lips; yet his eyes seemed impish, a mischievous gleam lurking in their olive hue. This blend of sincerity and playfulness made Jamie really comfortable, and all the more ready to discard the anxiety and doubts that so far had been holding him back.

Suddenly, he was feeling at home again. Not with a judgmental stranger he wanted badly to impress, but with someone he wanted to get close to and share with. 

He swallowed carefully, feeling the tension rise up inside him. This time, however, it wasn’t the tension caused by embarrassment, by the fear of ridicule and rejection, but one that set him ready for the challenge ahead.

Still holding Brandon, he cuddled into his arm. It was as if he tried to imprint Brandon’s warmth and his refined smoky scent onto his own form, to fight the nervousness, inevitably building up, with togetherness. 

“Want to try again?”, eventually he dared to ask.

“Do you?” Brandon refracted Jamie’s question, his voice smooth and gentle. In Jamie’s perceptions it echoed with earnest concern, and was followed by a mild, yet ever so enticing slide of Brandon’s fingers underneath the blanket and up Jamie’s thigh. 

Jamie bit his lips, the sizzle of excitement filling his hips, tracing his spine upwards, taking over his limbs. It was like Brandon’s touch infected his body with desire, disabling his faculty of self-consciousness, second-thoughts and immobilizing memories. It was like a miracle, a miracle of not looking back.

“I do”, Jamie responded quietly and plainly, giving Brandon a focused stare right into his eyes and a light grip on the hand resting upon his thigh. “Do you?”, he repeated his initial question intently, yet in his heart of hearts, and in his heartbeat of heartbeats, he expected an answer no other than what he eventually heard.

“I do, too.” This sounded very solemn, to a degree even sacred. It was like it pertained to something of much more gravity and greater consequences than simply a choice whether to resume having sex right now or not.

Sensing all this right beneath his skin, along with his frenzy-struck flow of blood, Jamie stared at Brandon like he was the most gorgeous sight in all the worlds ever invented, both fantasy and real. And right there he was, this otherworldly marvel, letting Jamie close enough to participate in his exquisiteness, to taste his charms, to be wrapped in that aura of beauty for just a few moments of amazement. 

He moved over to place himself over Brandon. He shuddered as he felt Brandon’s hips shift beneath him invitingly. Overflowing with respect, admiration and desire for Brandon’s beautiful physicality, he translated all these feelings into kisses he planted upon Brandon’s neck, clavicle, and all the way up to his forehead.

Feeling Brandon’s arms embrace him trustingly – those lean, stringy arms which in an odd way felt really strong – for the first time since they had landed in bed that night, Jamie was positively, honestly intoxicated with arousal. And all the while, inexplicably enough, he also was at peace, comfortable through and through. 

It wasn’t like he lasted much longer this second time. But then, that wasn’t the point, either. This time he had given himself permission to be himself, and that was the key to it all.

***

It seemed like, at least for a while, Brandon’s addiction had entered some sort of remission. No, not even Jamie with his penchant for wishful thinking could genuinely believe the problem had simply gone away just like that. What he was hoping for, however, and what somehow matched his observations, was that owing to the adventures of his last sex spree Brandon had had enough of getting high on the hormones at least for now, and that exploring his relationship with Jamie together with its new physical dimensions would keep him busy for a while, busy enough not to wander off with his thoughts to porn, one night stands, or whatever he liked to entertain himself with.

It wasn’t like Jamie was always being all that sensible. There were days, those sweet peaceful days when Jamie felt so head over heels in love and wanted no outside concern to interfere with the cozy little world of their own, when he liked to forget that Brandon had any problem at all. In fact, especially over the first few weeks since Brandon had made his spectacular return, Jamie tended to completely disregard the issue, like it had never existed. And whenever anything – a memory let loose, a sight, a scent, a piece of unrelated information – did remind him of the circumstances of Brandon’s disappearance, he had surprisingly little problem brushing the association off.

Initially, Jamie had a hard time resisting the temptation of the alluring daydreams that put right inside his head ludicrous thoughts such as _He’s hit the bottom and he’s cured now_ , or _He’s with me now, there’s no way he’s going back to that shit_ , or even, the wackiest and most irresistible of them all, _He’s tried it all and that’s it, now he’s ready to commit_. 

Fortunately for them both, the euphoric spell of the early stages of a sexual relationship, combined with Jamie’s amazement at how unexpectedly things had turned and gone his way, finally began to wear off. Once the original excitement had slowly but steadily turned into a reliable everyday norm, with his exaltation sunglasses now down, Jamie could regain a more sober look at what was going on in his apartment. 

And what was going on was that, essentially, Brandon still wasn’t looking for professional help for his issues, even though he had said he would on a number of occasions.

He clearly wasn’t looking for a job, either, spending all of his days in Jamie’s apartment, cleaning, cooking, re-arranging Jamie’s wardrobe (including an expert level washing and ironing of Jamie’s clothes, an area in which regard Brandon had skills of a professional stylist) and looking after the pets. As much as Jamie appreciated Brandon looking after their shared household like that, and as much as he had told himself to be patient not to rush anything and not to hurt Brandon’s feelings, ultimately he had to admit that this was a double concern to him.

One part of this concern was that Jamie was uncertain of Brandon’s material status and its possible fluctuations resulting from his remaining unemployed for an extended period of time. Sure, there had been no money problems between the two of them so far; Brandon would buy the groceries and pet food, and he properly paid his share of bills. Telling from his own apartment, the fancy brands of shirts in his wardrobe, or his general appreciation of the finer things in life, it was also apparent that Brandon was well-off. Surely his previous job must have been a well-paid one, providing him with a decent amount of savings at his disposal. 

But still, savings were only savings, right? No matter how big at the starting point, they were something inherently limited. Sooner or later they would be exhausted, unless Brandon had some other mysterious source of income that for now remained unrevealed to Jamie (and perhaps justly so – Jamie had already learned that he shouldn’t be so eager to know each and every single Brandon’s secret). Anticipating that moment when they would, Jamie decided it would be more than reasonable to encourage Brandon to get a job really soon, before things turned actually dramatic. 

He didn’t know about Brandon, who was typically secretive and not really open about his opinions on any matter, but as for himself, Jamie wanted to avoid the scenario when Brandon’s financial reserve dried up and he would be faced with an unbelievable choice – whether to let Brandon go, or let him stay and allow their relationship to become a parasitic, dependent one. 

That other part of Jamie’s worry was that his euphoric period of denial notwithstanding, he was by now quite aware of the nature of Brandon’s sexual predicament: progressive, persistent and relentless, the kind that would creep up on you without a warning and strike with a sudden urge whenever you found yourself tired, or bored, or simply with no better idea what to do with your time.

Jamie also realized, even though he had had no courage to discuss the matter with Brandon openly, that his previous disappearance due to a sex spree must have been caused by Brandon’s idleness, at least partially. Brandon would spend all days at Jamie’s place all alone, with no specific tasks or interests to engage in on a regular basis – except this one interest Brandon would best stay away from. Ergo, letting Brandon stay home alone with nothing particular to do was asking for trouble, to say the least. Simply put, it meant provoking a relapse.

Jamie’s hesitation and insecurities about the situation increased on a weekly basis – quite literally, because each Monday, as he found himself getting on the subway train off for his morning shift, an idea would spin through his head that yet another week had gone by and nothing substantial had changed. He would still be gone for most of the day, leaving Brandon in the apartment with few productive things to do, or, worse still, with plenty of room for doing things he shouldn’t even be thinking about doing. 

Thus, there were these two key issues that Jamie needed to discuss with Brandon, and as time went by, the inevitability of discussing them would only strike Jamie as stronger.

Not surprisingly, Jamie found it a lot easier to take up the topic of Brandon’s employment rather than his therapy. He hadn’t been persistent about Brandon getting a job earlier, which actually was of some advantage to him right now. He felt it allowed him to get around to the subject pretty innocently and avoid sounding like he was putting any pressure on Brandon. 

Somewhere at the back of his mind Jamie realized that it was exactly what they called manipulative, but at the time, he didn’t think of it that way. He told himself he was simply being considerate of Brandon’s feelings. Making him feel like he was a parasite or unwelcomed if he didn’t contribute financially was the last thing Jamie wanted, right? It wasn’t like he avoided confronting Brandon in the open because then he would have to expose his own self as it was, with his own not so generous needs and limits. _Not at all_.

One part of him, one buried deep inside, had known for a long time that it was so much better to be in the position to judge than be judged, and that was precisely why this odd configuration they had with Brandon suited him just fine no matter its many flaws. He was, and had always been, the self-sufficient one, the one in control, the decision-maker everything in the relationship ultimately depended on. Or so he was convinced.

“So, what are your plans now?”, Jamie asked innocuously the other evening, leaving Brandon with a confused look on his face.

“Plans for what?”, Brandon responded in his usual deflective manner, implying that he truly was oblivious to whatever Jamie had on his mind in that exasperatingly convincing way.

“For the future?”, Jamie hesitantly blurted a not really illuminating answer. And so to quickly counter its vagueness before Brandon could take advantage of it and go on playing dumb, he specified: “I mean, when are you planning to go back to work?”

He made it seem with his question like he thought it absolutely obvious that Brandon at the moment was planning to take up a job. The truth was not so simple, however, and Jamie wouldn’t be so surprised if it turned out Brandon didn’t really have any specific plans, intent on sitting around for as long as possible. Jamie was hoping that by implying like to him, on the other hand, it didn’t even occur that Brandon might not be so determined to get his job back at some point, he would motivate Brandon to fix his resolve.

“I don’t know.” Not surprisingly, Brandon was still reluctant to give a straight answer, although he did prove some good will by elaborating on that statement. “I don’t want to go back to the job I used to have, so I’m going to look for a new one.”

Jamie was almost overjoyed to hear what given Brandon’s usual behavior seemed like a manifesto of cooperation. The excitement at Brandon’s apparent good intentions ( _Has it really been so easy this time?_ , Jamie would wonder as he internally shook his head in disbelief at this unexpectedly smooth turn of things) was more than enough to allow Jamie to ignore the twitch in his stomach caused by the mystery of why Brandon had irreversibly severed the ties with his previous workplace.

For all Jamie knew, Brandon had left quite a mess in his life when he came to live with Jamie (or when Jamie picked him up on the streets to live with him, to be precise). His sister’s suicide attempt was one part of it; his professional life, apparently, was another. Jamie knew better than to ask – he knew by now that Brandon wouldn’t tell him what had happened, and raising a defensive wall to set the two of them apart was the most he could achieve by persisting. 

Because as much as Jamie _wanted_ to _believe_ Brandon’s addiction wasn’t that bad, and as much as he _chose_ to _have faith_ that it wouldn’t take that much or be so difficult to help Brandon recover, he was in touch with reality just about enough to be prepared for that simple truth: the addition had influenced every part of Brandon’s life by either destroying or damaging it. 

Jamie didn’t really want to let his imagination run wild and picture all the upsetting scenarios that might have taken place – and neither did he really need to. On the inside, and with that strange serenity that accompanied this certainty, he was sure, he just _knew_ , that Brandon had lost his previous job because of the addiction. 

Maybe he had been acting out during the work, or maybe acting out outside his office hours had run him down, causing a drop in efficiency and an inability to concentrate, either or both resulting in having him fired. Or maybe Brandon had been the first to run, because somebody had found him out and Brandon, being his usual self, preferred to sacrifice his professional status and financial stability rather than face the humiliation, the stigmatization, or even being benevolently pressured to get help.

Whichever was the case, it was essential to get Brandon back to work while he still declared a sort of readiness to cooperate. Another month or even week spent in this kind of disconnection from the real life as an integral member of society and maybe Brandon would drown yet again into the current of his obsessions and fantasy life. Sure, now he was with Jamie, so things were different than before – but not different enough for the two of them to afford taking such chances. 

So Jamie felt it was his unquestionable duty to shoulder this responsibility and lead Brandon back to a balanced life within a community. If they didn’t do it right now, it could soon be too late. 

He wished to encourage Brandon as much as possible, or rather avoid discouraging Brandon as much as possible, and so he accepted Brandon’s resolve not to go back to his previous job with compassion and understanding, no further questions asked. And not that he even felt the need to ask them. It was enough to know that Brandon had many years of experience as a marketing designer in a, judging from the scarce information that Brandon had shared, quite dynamic and competitive public relations company. Having this item in his CV, along with multiple certificates and completed courses to confirm his qualifications both as a commercial designer and a public relations specialist, Brandon could certainly hope not to remain unemployed for too long – that is, provided he put at least some of his heart into the search, and prospective employer didn’t dig too deeply into the reasons why he had quit the previous job.

For his part, Brandon hadn’t said no to the search for a job, but he also didn’t seem very active about looking for it himself. He only had two baselines: one was that he was not going back to his previous company, a fact that he stated as a reminder every once in a while so as to make his point ultimately clear (which only tempted Jamie again to wonder what really had happened at Brandon’s last workplace if he emphasized the impossibility of his return this consistently and this redundantly), and the other was that he could do with anything as long as it remained within the range of his formal education and experience (of course he hadn’t put it in such elaborate words; what he had really said was something closer to “It’s not like I can suddenly become a doctor or a lawyer”, uttered with that confusing, poker-faced seriousness as if he had thought Jamie even considered the possibility). 

Anyway, Jamie was eager to help Brandon find a new job, which when put to practice resulted in him doing all the research, spending hours over the internet and flooding Brandon’s e-mail with offers that seemed at least remotely worthwhile, and Brandon basically either ignoring the offers or turning his nose up at them. 

The most confusing part was perhaps that Jamie couldn’t tell one from another, because whenever he confronted Brandon for his opinion about any given job offer, Brandon would respond with his trademark vague ‘sounds okay’ or ‘yeah, I’ll check this out’. When Brandon gave him such lines, Jamie had no idea how to pressure him any further, mostly because he didn’t have the guts to counter Brandon’s evasiveness with a more straightforward and less take-as-much-time-as-you-want patient “So are you going to take it or not?”. 

Again, it was all about being helpful, or rather not being a hindrance to the cause. Jamie still didn’t want to discourage Brandon with his own hotheadedness. And he still didn’t want to make it clear how much it mattered to him that Brandon get that goddamn job already. So instead, he would remain silent and stay uncomplaining, and wait until nothing happened. And only then, that is, some week or two after Brandon had given him the first “I’ll check this out”, Jamie would ask again: “So, how did that X offer from a while ago turn out?”, to which Brandon would reply with another uninformative “Yeah, well, nothing much”. On such occasions Jamie refrained from any further inquiries, afraid that Brandon would consider it pestering or intrusive, but he couldn’t escape the feeling – certainty, actually– that Brandon hadn’t done anything about the offer in question. Not a single e-mail, not a single telephone, nothing.

As the end of July was approaching and this manner of job seeking at Jamie’s apartment still continued, things were starting to feel rather desperate yet again. That was when Jamie felt a second wind coming along to aid his search efforts – or maybe he was the one who invited the wind rather than idly waiting until it finally graced him with its arrival. Whichever it was, the point was that Jamie refused to let it go down like that. He figured there had to be something more he could do about the matter.

Thus, one evening he sat down with his laptop and gave it a careful thought: what kind of career could Brandon be motivated to pursue? What kind of job would he be actually motivated to do, drawing pleasure from his daily tasks rather than going through the tedious motions? 

Obviously, it had to be something related to Brandon’s interests, something that would keep him going – and preferably as far from sex, titillation and carnality as one could get. 

The first thing to meet these high-bar criteria that came to Jamie’s mind was clothing and fashion. After all, in Jamie’s total layman eyes Brandon could easily pass for a professional stylist; his competence in the area seemed to largely exceed the level expected of a passionate amateur, and his sense of trends and standards alike felt like something original and unparalleled. 

Still, there was a certain problem with this area that even Jamie’s awestruck eyes could not overlook: fashion industry appeared like an extremely competitive one, and not exactly welcoming to total outsiders. It certainly didn’t seem like a business a newcomer could storm into just like that, casually, with no names to go dropping around that would back you up. Jamie also was at a loss as how to link marketing design with fashion; as expected, job offers which would combine these two did not exactly abound, to put it mildly. 

If not clothes, then what? Jamie struggled for a moment trying to find out if there was anything else that sparkled Brandon’s interest on a daily basis and would therefore ensure the appeal of the related job offers to him (except for his cleaning and tidying habits bordering on compulsive, which were assumed to be rather difficult to translate into a professional environment, at least one that would parallel Brandon’s education and his income expectations). 

Then suddenly it dawned on Jamie. He remembered how Brandon was quite a bit of a healthy food freak. It wasn’t that obvious when it came to Brandon’s own eating choices – Jamie still suspected that when left on his own Brandon spent worryingly long periods eating absolutely nothing, and when he did have a meal, he settled for instant or takeaway junk food. This was an area that had Jamie significantly worried, even though it appeared to be a secondary problem when compared to Brandon’s sex life, and besides, it all seemed a fixed set if not a system – poor eating routines, poor sleeping routines, self-neglect, and a life lived essentially from one erotic high to another. Jamie was certain they wouldn’t even as much as scratch any of these until Brandon entered a proper therapy, which, given Brandon’s lack of excitement over the subject, wasn’t happening anytime soon.

As for meals that Brandon prepared for the two of them or for Jamie alone, however, that was a completely different matter. He wouldn’t tolerate any of the discount low-brow stuff Jamie’s pragmatic self would usually load the fridge up with. He wouldn’t settle for anything less than a package with ‘bio’, ‘fit’, ‘eco’ and ‘non-GMO’ labels plastered all over. Jamie sometimes perceived it as funny in an adorable kind of way, and sometimes as more irritating than endearing. There had also been moments when this seemingly innocent preference of Brandon created tension which Jamie personally deemed out of the blue and unnecessary, especially given the pettiness (in Jamie’s eyes) of the subject matter. Those were the moments when Brandon showed a bossy and controlling side to him, one that he himself appeared to be completely unaware of; moments when he caught Jamie in the kitchen grabbing a fruit yoghurt and stopped him with a decisive “Wait, you’re not going to eat this over-sweetened chemical garbage, let me make you a cocktail”. 

On such occasions, Jamie found himself tangled in conflicting emotions. He liked the feeling he was being taken care of by Brandon, and cooking for Jamie had been one of the most emotional displays of care that Brandon was capable of – but then, it was _Jamie’s_ kitchen, _Jamie’s_ apartment, and _Jamie’s_ diet choices. And the more such situations repeated, the more convinced Jamie would get that nurturing him may not have motivated Brandon as much as his self-will to have his way. Apparently he had those perfectionist expectations of what and how people should eat, and when he shared an apartment with someone, he felt the urge to impose these expectations on that person, too, because his way was the only right way.

Thus, over time Jamie had grown annoyed at what started out as something that made him feel appreciated and attended to. Still, he didn’t say or do much to oppose Brandon’s kitchen tyranny. First, he didn’t want Brandon to feel rejected, and second, cooking for Jamie and then eating together were most of the time the only occasions when Jamie could confirm that Brandon did eat, and that he ate something nourishing and healthy. If that was what it took to make sure Brandon’s eating disorders wouldn’t go rampage, then it did not seem like that much of a sacrifice to Jamie. 

He settled then for letting Brandon take charge of their groceries, even though personally he was still critical of how much Brandon spent on food (Brandon himself covered all the expenses, so Jamie felt he had no say in how Brandon spent what after all was his own money, but still, considering himself someone with a heightened awareness of society problems such as poverty and malnourishment, Jamie found that there was something cringe-worthy about all this extravaganza and his own participation in it) and skeptical about the point of all this (unlike Brandon, he was far from the religious-like faith in taking what the labels said at the face value, and he preferred to let his common sense decide whether something was good for his body rather than waste time and energy trying to obtain information on the contents of all the products down to every detail). He kept these comments to himself, however, and let it all pass. It wasn’t really worth the strife when Brandon’s attitude towards eating was so ambivalent and delicate; Jamie was sincerely afraid that if he upset Brandon with such criticism, he would make him backslide into those harmful eating, or should one say starving habits. 

For the same reasons Jamie had adjusted his mealtimes and all the aspects of his eating while at home to accommodate to Brandon’s schedule and Brandon’s ideas. Apart from those firm suspicions bordering on certitude that the times when they ate together were likely the only times when Brandon ate at all, Jamie was also alert of the fact that usually Brandon wouldn’t really eat anything that he hadn’t prepared himself. So if Jamie wouldn’t eat what Brandon had prepared, Brandon wouldn’t either, and since he wouldn’t also eat anything else, he would end up fasting for heaven knows how long. 

Brandon wasn’t explicitly manipulative about it; he wasn’t doing it to make Jamie feel guilty or simply bad. In fact, it seemed like most often he actually tried to hide from Jamie those periods when he simply wouldn’t eat. Still, the inevitable results of all this were that Jamie found the situation baffling, pressurizing and downright stressful, like his conscience had to carry the burden of Brandon’s hunger or malnutrition. It was so much easier then to go along with whatever Brandon proposed and let him take charge if that was what he wanted. He really was a great cook anyway, and it spared Jamie what he usually considered mundane kitchen duties. 

And the most inconvenience he had to bear as a result was that he ended up hiding his favorite foods disapproved of by Brandon, and then smuggling them to his workplace, taking up most of the space in the clinic employees’ shared fridge in the process and inspiring his colleagues’ jokes about him apparently having moved to their clinic or else considering the move in the near future.

What all these observation about Brandon’s attitude to food and eating came down to was that  
they had made it clear to Jamie that all the aspects of the situation made perfect sense. Everything was perfectly in Brandon’s nature: he either didn’t care about something at all, or he jumped into something with a full-blown obsession. And that was also the case with his relationship with food. Putting the influence of having an obsession-prone personality on your private life aside, in terms of employment obsession was usually equated with dedication and passion, as well as meticulousness, all definitely valued by prospective employers. It had to be worth it to give it a try; Jamie imagined that a marketing job in food industry in this case should make both parties happy. 

Once Jamie had reached those conclusions, things went faster than he even dared to expect. He specified his search to marketing in the food industry, and one of the first ads that drew his attention said that a small family company producing healthy foods was looking for a marketing designer whose task would be to create their promotional materials, including their online newsletter. The ad also mentioned a friendly work environment (which wasn’t all that surprising given it was an XS size family company after all), flexible working time and a possibility to do some of the work from home.

Was that a dream come true? The only shortcoming Jamie could predict while looking at the offer was that Brandon couldn’t count on a salary comparable to what he was used to in his previous company (not that Jamie had asked Brandon about the specific digits or even really discussed the issue, but telling from the fact how yuppishly well-off Brandon had seemed or even from that he had been able to just quit and still not worry about the money for another four months or so, he must have made significantly more than the income range presented in the ad). And that wasn’t something Jamie would choose to be overly concerned with – Brandon had said after all that any kind of job would do, and he never even once mentioned his financial expectations. True, maybe it was simply that Brandon wasn’t telling Jamie everything (a rather conceivable scenario if Brandon was being Brandon), and maybe those had been precisely the grounds upon which Brandon had discarded all the previous offers… yes, that was possible, but simply not likely. 

All this time he stayed with Jamie, Brandon’s attitude had been that of a person to whom money really wasn’t a problem. It was a rather safe bet that neither it would be this time. 

Trying to cool down his excitement – after all, Brandon’s view of reality often didn’t correspond to Jamie’s and what made Jamie’s head spin with all the prospects and possibilities might as well have Brandon only shrug his shoulders – Jamie composed a quick e-mail, in which he included a link to the ad supplemented with a short note:

_I’m pretty sure this one is something that would suit you fine._

Brandon, who was sitting at his computer (he got himself one shortly after he had decided he would more or less permanently move in with Jamie) in the living room, replied within less than five minutes. This was a good sign, thought Jamie, because it meant the offer had captured Brandon’s interest enough to get him to check the offer as soon as he received it. 

When Jamie opened Brandon’s reply, the message consisted of a predictable:

_Sounds alright._

It was, however, followed by a less formulaic:

_Looks like something I could be doing._

Now this seemed almost like a personal confession, at least for Brandon’s standards. Jamie decided he could be optimistic about how things would work out from then on – and indeed, it turned out he was right. Brandon really fancied the prospect of working for a food company, where he could combine his marketing education with his third (after sex and fashion) greatest passion/obsession, enough not to need any further prompting in pursuing this particular post. 

In fact, Jamie suddenly discovered this usually lukewarm guy could be quite energetic and efficient in dealing with the real life once he had set his mind on achieving something. He didn’t need Jamie to take him by the hand and arrange everything for him anymore. 

He contacted the company in question himself, no more nagging on Jamie’s part required. He arranged for an interview, and the interview apparently went quite well, because the company decided to hire him right away. (Jamie didn’t dare to ask if they had been curious about under what circumstances and why Brandon had left the previous job, and how Brandon coped in case they had. It didn’t matter anyway, because apparently whatever answer Brandon came up with, it must have satisfied them.)

Starting August, Jamie would have Brandon out of the house on regular intervals, at least a few hours a day. Brandon would have a schedule to adhere to now, and would be busy doing creative and useful things. 

Most importantly, with specific work and tasks filling up his days, Brandon’s days would gain a more predictable and proportional shape. He would have to devote time and energy to his new job now, which would take a steady part of his day, and in the remaining time he would have to fit in the everyday chores and routines – grooming, cooking, cleaning (one of the key elements of Brandon’s day, after all), looking up the news over the internet, etc. There would be much less leisure for him, and consequently, much less boredom. And it was precisely boredom that Jamie was most weary of. 

For boredom was unnerving. Boredom was that itchy feeling of something special out there you could get, you should get, only didn’t even know yourself what it was exactly. Boredom stood dangerously close to an awareness of your loneliness and emptiness, the void eating you up inside. Boredom would make you think. It would make you realize what you missed and that you were lacking. And so boredom could be that single thing that would seduce Brandon into believing he deserved to be doing something fun and exciting at this very moment – and Brandon’s definitions of ‘fun’ and ‘excitement’ were exactly that something Jamie was ready to go to great lengths just to keep him from putting into practice. 

Of course, Jamie was aware of the fact that sending Brandon to such a job would result in further fanning his healthy eating obsession, meaning more righteous meals on Jamie’s plate, more righteous foods in Jamie’s fridge, and more righteous lunchboxes slipped into Jamie’s bag just when he had dreamed of finally consuming with delight those instant vanilla flavor oatmeal porridges he had smuggled to the clinic a couple of days before. 

Still, all this seemed like a reasonable price for keeping Brandon occupied.

***

Searching a job for Brandon was just a prelude and a walk in a park when compared to getting him to look for a therapist. Here, too, Jamie had decided to be patient and adopted the motto of first things first, in this case meaning _let’s find him a job first and let him get used to all the new stuff going on in his life – there’s been so much of it all at once, it must feel overwhelming, not exactly the best moment to start a therapy, huh?_

Deep inside, however, Jamie knew that this wasn’t the complete truth. He wasn’t very imposing with the subject of Brandon’s therapy just because he was being considerate. He anticipated there would be problems and resistance on Brandon’s part, resistance he would have no idea how to cope with (because he hadn’t come up with any until now, and the topic had been with them all along, since the first weeks of their knowing each other). So instead, he preferred to postpone the whole matter, deluding himself into thinking that it was time that Brandon needed, and that once Brandon caught some breath and balance he would see for himself how much he and his issues needed some counseling from a professional.

In the meantime, Jamie settled for conducting extensive research. The content of research included reading every book he could find on the market pertaining to sex addiction, effects of childhood sexual abuse on the adult survivor, or both – his imagination running wild all the while as to what exactly had happened to Brandon in the past, as in who and how exactly had hurt him. Obviously, Jamie still didn’t have the guts (or perhaps, as he liked to think himself, wasn’t insane enough) to ask Brandon about that part straight up, and the vivid descriptions of childhood tragedies and broken lives he would come across in his books had only fanned his disturbing visions. 

Another step Jamie had taken to counter the idleness while waiting for Brandon to make up his mind was consulting support groups, such as Twelve Steps communities, and organizations which helped sex addicts or childhood trauma survivors. He had tried that before as early as after that first night he caught Brandon watching porn, but now he broadened the scope of his surveys. He mostly asked those institutions for recommended literature (it had quickly turned out that he already was quite a theoretical expert regarding these matters) and for trustworthy therapists. 

Among those, one name popped up on an especially regular basis. It was Dr. Terrence Ross, a specialist in counseling survivors of sexual abuse, who by extension also treated addictions and compulsions, sex addiction prominently included, which resulted from traumatic childhood experiences. This sounded exactly like what Jamie and Brandon needed.

“He may be controversial and he’s certainly not for everyone”, one consultant pointed out to Jamie, “but if you can put up with him, he’s the best you can get in the town”. 

Of course there was no question Jamie _could_ put up with him. He was pretty sure he could put up with anything if only that stood a slightest chance to help Brandon. Especially since that Dr. Ross guy apparently was not an abusive type of therapist, not that sort of helping professional who took advantage of his patients and instead of really helping them preferred to fuel his ego with their dependency and vulnerability. He was simply said to be incorrect and improper, certainly not the beating-around-the-bush type. Jamie could handle that much, as long as he was competent and had a good understanding of the situation.

The question if Brandon could handle that, if Brandon could handle _any_ therapist to begin with, was quite a different matter.

Initially, just like he had with the job search, Jamie tried not to rush the things, and not to be too pushy. There were those moments when he grew restless about Brandon’s recovery (such as those when Brandon disappeared in the bathroom for periods much longer than it should reasonably take to take a shower, and despite his own sincere willingness Jamie could neither fail to notice it nor explain to himself that the disappearance had been caused by Brandon’s newfound fondness for personal hygiene) – on such occasions he’d only ask Brandon if he had already considered any options related to his therapy so far. 

On different occasions, such as when he would get hyped up about a discovery he had made, for instance a name of a new therapist with great references, or a highly esteemed therapy center, whether inpatient or outpatient, almost floating with enthusiasm Jamie would approach Brandon, zealously looking forward to sharing the exciting news.

Brandon’s reaction to these was essentially the same: an unfailingly predictable, somewhat grumpy set of grunts, consisting of universal expressionless conversation-breakers such as “sure”, “right”, “we’ll see” or “I’ll think about it”, interwoven with prolonged periods of silence as if to let Jamie know just how much he should regret having brought up this unwelcomed subject. (It was often followed, very suitably, by yet another of such telling and painfully long solitary trips of Brandon into the bathroom.) 

Long story short, then, there was no talking to Brandon about the sensitive subject matter. And it was quite reasonable to wonder if there ever would be. Driven by a defensive inclination, Jamie attempted to ignore this concern for as long as he could. In fact, he tried to talk himself out of the worry, convincing himself that Brandon was overstrained right now, and too troubled by all the changes going on in his life (as if Brandon’s behavior hadn’t been a veritable display of being change-resistant) to handle this very disruptive topic. It was all about time, all Brandon needed was time, Jamie told himself over again, putting on hold his own intuitions, needs and that persistent feeling of urgency.

Time, however, wouldn’t slow its course down – it actually felt like ever since those first days of the euphoria of their shared living had gone by, time suddenly sped up slipping through Jamie’s fingers, with a poisonous little voice deriding him in his ear about sitting around doing nothing, and worse still, fantasizing all about Brandon’s therapy and virtually guiding him to his recovery inside his head, while in reality every precious little second was being wasted. 

Thus, there came the day when Jamie decided to confront Brandon with the Big Question. He had reached the point when he knew enough and now had to act. It also coincided with Brandon having been accepted for a new job, so there were no more excuses such as ‘one big decision, one challenge at a time’ left. 

That evening, unsuspecting Brandon was sitting leisurely on the sofa, chilling with a bottle of beer in front of that fancy plasma TV he had insisted they bring from his apartment to Jamie’s because apparently he found that life without a TV-set sucked. (Jamie had got by without it pretty fine for those three years since Jessie left, with Jamie’s full and complete blessing for the TV to be taken away as part of their amicable ‘estate division’. For this reason Brandon’s point of view was hardly comprehensible to him, but he didn’t oppose. TV may not have been indispensable, but it was useful nonetheless.) He was watching some commentary to the evening news, or was it a talk-show? Jamie was too nervous to really focus and tell the details. 

And in fact, he started off by asking Brandon to turn the volume down, because he had something to talk about with him. He deliberately removed attributive forms such as ‘something important’ or serious words such as ‘discuss’ from his announcement; he really didn’t want to give Brandon an early heads-up and have him getting all uptight from the get-go.

The results yielded by this idea were promising. Brandon compliantly pressed the volume down button on the remote control and silently looked up at Jamie, appearing mildly interested.

Going crazy with all the tension inside – as it was always the case with their Big Important Conversations with their unfailing pattern of Jamie insisting to talk and Brandon insisting just as much on keeping silent – and extremely self-conscious about the way to tackle this topic, Jamie sat next to Brandon on the sofa and breathed out uneasily. 

After considering a few options of how to open this talk, Jamie realized that there was no perfect way and nothing guaranteed success, success in this case meaning not driving Brandon away and shutting him down right at the start. Yes, he could try some manipulative beating around the bush, but what was the use? It would only postpone the inevitable substantial part of their conversation, and as Jamie had already learned, no amount of small-talking and watering down could make Brandon soften up and become more cooperative. He simply wasn’t the type that could be maneuvered into giving up his alertness with the nice cozy feelings produced by a connection with another human being. Maybe it had something to do with his reluctance to conversations as such and an apparent inability to perceive them as connection builders. Or maybe it was because connection as such wasn’t something Brandon was all that crazy about in the first place. 

Anyway, since treading in circles supposedly wouldn’t produce any desirable results anyway, Jamie settled for a straight up notice.

“So, I’ve found another therapist for you.” Jamie tried to make it sound as casually as possible, but every single word weighed the world on his shoulders, throat and tongue. 

And not without a reason: Brandon’s only response was to give Jamie a tired and unwilling, _do you really have to go through this again?_ kind of look, and then to take a gulp from his bottle to make a point of how uninterested in this matter he was.

Jamie knew he couldn’t count on anything more. He also knew he couldn’t let it dispirit him. He had known what to expect, and had known he had to follow through anyway. Everything was clear. They had had this conversation so many times before. Only now Jamie had planned to take up something…heavier and more daring. 

“I’ve sent you a link to his online profile. You can check his record, and his certificates, and his references. He seems like an excellent choice. I’d really like to know what you think about him.”

Brandon responded with his universal watchword. 

“Sure.” 

_Sure_ in Brandonese usually meant anything within the range from _whatever_ , through _I don’t know_ , through _I don’t care_ to _just leave me alone_. It required some experience and proficiency to be able to detect which it was now; this time Jamie’s bet was on _leave me alone_ , especially when Brandon demonstratively turned volume back up and tilted his head towards the TV, explicitly stating with his body language that to him this conversation was over.

Jamie let out an inaudible nervous gasp, feeling all queasy inside, like his own body was telling him to let this be. But he knew he couldn’t. That would be the easy way, and the easiest way usually wasn’t the right way. That was a rule he lived by, and one of the few things about himself he could genuinely say he was proud of.

Clenching his fists as if to galvanize himself into action, he gave Brandon’s profile an intent gaze. “I’m not finished yet”, he articulated with maximum determination he could muster, a commanding tone mostly unheard of in his private life showing through. 

Brandon didn’t even look his way, pretending to be so absorbed with the program that just happened to be on that he failed to realize Jamie was still there. It really set Jamie off balance, and for a moment he got hesitant, in spite of all his buildup for this conversation, if he really wanted to carry on. _Perhaps it would be wiser if we put it off for another occasion_ , he wondered.

Then, something inside him felt strangely, unyieldingly defiant. And angry. 

Put off for another occasion? Like when? And what occasion? There was never a better moment, not with Brandon. Brandon always excelled at letting Jamie know that anything was of greater importance to him than his own therapy, and that Jamie was the loser to be interested in Brandon’s recovery so much more than Brandon was. Jamie could take no more of that shit. No more excuses. No more dodging. No more walking on eggshells.

“His name is Terrence Ross”, he continued, raising his voice just enough to be louder than TV – and he knew how to do that alright. Even though he hardly ever used those abilities now, he really had a good technical command of his voice thanks to his training in a high school recitation club propped by his remarkable innate diction makeup. 

He could tell he succeeded in getting Brandon’s attention by a microscopic flinch on Brandon’s face. Quite satisfied with that kind of outcome, he advanced blatantly: “He is rather divisive, but he’s a good specialist. They say he’s one of the best out there as far as incest and childhood sexual abuse are concerned”.

That was a powerful statement, and Jamie had been very specific about making all along. Never before had they openly discussed the subject of what had happened to Brandon in his childhood and what had made him the way he was now. Never before had those taboo labels been as much as mentioned, or even indirectly referred to. This had been Jamie’s conscious plan for that day, to finally break the taboo, speak the words out lou and get a confirmation from Brandon that this really was what had been done to him, the real core of his problem.

Jamie was, therefore, ready for Brandon’s reaction – or so he had thought; he was ready for Brandon to get emotional, out of control even, the way he had previously on a number of occasions when he either revealed to Jamie something he didn’t want to show (such as his obsession with porn) or Jamie pulled some sensitive thread (such as asking him upfront about his sex addiction).

Jamie wasn’t, however, prepared for what happened in reality. True, his game-breaking words had made enough of an impression on Brandon to finally make him turn his head away from the TV and towards Jamie; yet what Jamie saw in Brandon’s eyes made him freeze with a thus far unknown kind of fear.

What Brandon’s eyes showed wasn’t pain. It wasn’t shame, either. It wasn’t even dread or panic.

It was hatred.

Genuine, ice cold, relentless hatred. It told Jamie to step back, and take back what he had just said. 

It was a _get lost or I’ll fucking kill you_ kind of hatred. It had never occurred to Jamie that Brandon was capable of having such feelings. Especially for him. Especially over this matter and over Jamie only trying to help him. Especially when Brandon himself was so unwilling to help himself.

Still, Brandon said nothing. He only glared at Jamie in that way for another couple of seconds, looking hostile and menacing, and so unbelievably distant at the same time, making Jamie literally move away on the sofa. 

Then, like it all hadn’t meant a thing, Brandon resumed his staring into the TV screen. This frightening scene from seconds before would have seemed purely surreal, if Brandon hadn’t accentuated his ongoing dismissive attitude by turning the volume up by another point, declaring both silently and unflinchingly that this time their talk was really over.

Like hell it was. Through the clouds of fear the rays of rage broke through. Jamie couldn’t give up. Not right now, not like that. What on earth was Brandon thinking? Now Jamie was the bad guy for telling him the truth, for confronting him with reality, or what? 

With slightly fidgety fingers, Jamie brushed back his hair falling upon his forehead. He was somewhat distracted to sense the wetness of cold sweat underneath the palm of his hand.

Taking a few decisive breaths to stop or at least control the trembling inside, he got up and stood in front of the TV, purposefully blocking the view. He was greeted with an angry frown, but he was too resolute right now to mind.

“Look, we really need to have this conversation, do you understand that?” He took on Brandon’s frown with confidence, looking straight back at him, weighing his determination and commitment against the power of Brandon’s resentment. “Do you need any more time? How much do you think you need?”

“How about an eternity”, grumbled Brandon with his knife-sharp chilly voice. It was about the second line he had uttered in this talk, so Jamie still considered this response a sort of success.

Enough of a success, at least, to enable him to put down his defenses. There was nothing to get so worked up about if some form of connection, or better said: data transmission, had been achieved. 

Therefore relieved to a certain degree, Jamie sighed and rolled his eyes in reaction, not without exasperation, but somehow jokingly, which he felt matched the tone of Brandon’s reply. “I do think you can do better, though.” He leant down towards the still seated Brandon and as if in a _we’re good now, let’s make up_ gesture he stroked his arm soothingly. Brandon had shown his good will to compromise by uttering some kind of reply, so Jamie could now show his by rewarding Brandon with his patient compassion. “Tell me, what are you so afraid of?”

Jamie was quick to realize, however, how naïve it had been of him to formulate a question like that and expect Brandon to explain in an honest way about his fears and insecurities. It would probably have been more accurate to ask if Brandon himself was even aware of his vulnerable feelings such as fear, or if he even let himself feel those feelings in the open. Perhaps he found them more bearable when he masked them with the pretense of different emotions, such as anger or bitterness or annoyance.

Thus, Brandon wouldn’t say what he was afraid of – what he did say was what he didn’t like.

“I don’t like it when people meddle in these things.” Brandon was curt and to the point with what he meant to say, but all Jamie heard between the lines was, again, an invitation to carry on with the conversation – or better yet, an invitation to be understood.

“I can understand that”, he confirmed therefore, intent on fulfilling Brandon’s assumed unspoken wishes. “But Brandon”, he gave him a tender and concerned look before seating himself again by Brandon’s side on the sofa, only this time much closer, “I’m not people”. He squeezed Brandon’s shoulder supportively, and he paused for a second to make a proper impact, one deserving of the importance of the statement he was going to make. “I’m your partner.”

That was huge. Probably just as huge as an explicit bringing up the topics of incest or childhood abuse. And Jamie realized that. He realized just how splashy and grandiose this confession might have seemed. Calling himself Brandon’s partner was a flamboyant declaration of commitment, a flagrant labeling of things that Brandon would rather have left unnamed. 

Along with the thrill and pride he felt at calling himself that, and that exquisite sensation of making a turning point in their relationship happen right then and there, Jamie naturally felt a lot of uneasiness and anxiety. What if Brandon got furious about this naming and timing? What if he didn’t feel the same way? What if he refused to be called anyone’s partner, or having Jamie calling himself his partner?

Luckily, Brandon didn’t object nor deny the idea.

Or was it really lucky?

Because while Brandon may not have rejected the concept of Jamie as his partner, he also showed no affirmation, no consideration, not even the slightest interest in it. It seemed more like didn’t bother to think about it at all, his full attention captured by something else entirely. 

“And this makes you what, entitled to meddle in my affairs?” He sounded deeply hostile, and there could be no mistake: he didn’t care at all about what Jamie called himself. _Do as you please_ , he seemed to be really saying, _call yourself my partner, my wife or my fairy godmother if you fancy, just fucking stay away from my business_. Chasing Jamie away from those uncomfortable subjects was the only thing that mattered to him right now; the status of their relationship didn’t.

And Jamie was surprised to discover he wasn’t sure what hurt him more. Brandon’s reluctance to therapy and to discussing his past could have been predicted, but his indifference towards Jamie calling himself his partner was unexpected. And it threw Jamie off balance. 

He had thought that they were at a different place right now, at a place where they both could at least admit they cared about each other and planned to stand by each other in a devoted way – and that they both were involved in this cause roughly to an equal degree. If that wasn’t the case, then where were they…?

Before he could take note of it and control it, Jamie found himself winking in disbelief. 

He didn’t, however, let these sore thoughts and feelings grow any further. He had a task ahead, a goal to attend to. So it was first things first. He had to negotiate with Brandon about his therapy, strike some kind of a deal, and only then he could perhaps worry about the status of their relationship. 

He weighed his words and considered them slowly, not wanting to let his emotions get the best of him. Finally, he simply decided to ask Brandon what he had genuinely found hard to believe: “Do you call this meddling?” He looked into Brandon’s eyes, trying not to quiver in their cold, relentless light, and carried on explaining the obvious with as much poise as he could afford. “Your affairs concern me directly, you know that.” Having thus specified what he thought was inconsistent to the point of absurd in Brandon’s reasoning, Jamie decided to yet again hit the compassionate, nurturing, _I’m not your enemy note_. “I can tell you’re suffering. I can see that, you know? I want to help.” 

With Brandon icily responding with a steadfast “Yeah, and I don’t want to talk about it”, their dialogue had dangerously begun to show signs of falling into the same old fruitless pattern with Jamie trying all the tricks to get Brandon to even try to discuss whatever the issue had currently been, and Brandon repeating stubbornly that he wouldn’t comply with whatever Jamie was attempting to make him do.

Maybe it was upon that barely conscious realization of them repeating the same useless routine, or maybe it was a response to Brandon’s incessantly defiant attitude no matter how hard Jamie was trying to reach him, but Jamie could suddenly feel those momentarily extinguished flares of anger start to sparkle once again.

This was what made him reply forcefully, and perhaps a little too self-righteously than he had initially intended, “You can’t always just do what you want”.

Brandon frowned cautiously, in a meticulous and calculated manner. He definitely didn’t want Jamie to miss how repelled he was by Jamie’s mentoring tone. 

“It’s my business and I’m going to do whatever I please”, he declared vehemently, seething with that quiet, freezing rage at what he must have perceived as being told what to do, being instructed how to live, and being enlightened as to who he was and what the issue with his past had been. 

Jamie didn’t quite like himself with all the temper bottling up inside him; he wasn’t comfortable with himself having those feelings he considered selfish and self-important, especially under the circumstances. And yet, he was much less comfortable with Brandon’s impudent tone, with the arrogance of the false pride of a lone ranger, with all this _I can do what I want and you can’t order me around_ attitude. 

What was that now? A payback for all Jamie had been doing all this time to keep him out of the harm’s way? A thank you for Jamie’s time, energy and heart he had poured into keeping Brandon alive and hopeful for the better days to come? 

Jamie had made Brandon’s life his own. Brandon’s concerns were his concerns, Brandon’s sorrow were his sorrows. Brandon’s ups and downs felt like his own. Brandon couldn’t make it on his own anymore, he needed someone to help him, even to save him. Jamie had devoted the best of him to try and do that, and now, without any consideration of his own needs and his own wishes, what he received in return was _It’s my life, it’s my problems, so do me a favor and fuck off_.

A part of Jamie couldn’t be happier than to do just that, at the moment. The thing was, however, that Jamie knew what Brandon in all his self-satisfied ignorance failed to notice or perhaps chose to ignore: if Brandon got into trouble, it was Jamie who would pay the price. If Brandon made a mess, it was Jamie who would face the consequences. That was a part of what being together and caring about another person was about, and right now Brandon was making it really no fun. 

“That’s not something you can control, do you understand that? Do you realize that?”, he asked rhetorically, internally tired of what felt like going through the same conversation for a hundredth time. He made sure to breathe slowly and deeply not to let his emotions carry him away. Giving Brandon an earnest, determined look, he supplemented his questions with the bottom line he would have rather never been made to state so bluntly: “So as long as you’re with me, as long as you live here, then I’m sorry, but it’s not just your business”.

Brandon looked back at him briefly, and it was one of those dirty, harsh looks he had been so generous with so far as they were carrying that conversation.

His voice was calm and piercing, and so were his frigid eyes, as he commanded with total composure: “Leave me alone”.

On the surface, there was nothing brutal about that line. It was perhaps not the kindest thing to hear, but something completely normal, words that were uttered in closest relationships by either of the parties every now and then. And yet, their sound made Jamie feel like he was cracking up on the inside, filled with terror of rejection and abandonment. 

For the first time since Brandon had come back to him, for the first time in three months then, Jamie felt insecure about where they were headed. He suddenly remembered that fear of the plainest questions.

_Where do we go from here? Will we be alright? Can we even last?_

The unexpected recollection, the doubt he never wanted to experience again, made him want to coil and hide away. 

For a moment, Jamie bent his back forward and buried his head in his hands, like the weight of Brandon’s future, meaning the future of their relationship, placed upon his shoulders was crashing down on him.

He was quick, however, to lift himself up and stare back at Brandon, biting his lower lip hard in an expression of disconcertion, but also determination to set things straight.

He didn’t look like one, but he was a fighter. He knew that. He was proud of that. He wouldn’t give up, not on something he cared about so much and not on something he had worked so hard to achieve – not on something such as their bond, and not on someone such as Brandon.

He tried again the empathetic card. “What are you afraid of? Why can’t you trust me?” There were worry and fear shimmering in Jamie’s voice, but they were intertwined with a sincere willingness to understand, to learn the answers.

Nonetheless, the results remained exactly as before. Brandon was communication-resistant. He didn’t care about letting Jamie understand him, or about getting to understand Jamie himself. What he did care about was getting his point across, and to that point he adhered with an ironically admirable consistency. 

“It’s none of your business.”

Now Jamie was bordering on despair. 

While they might have had a number of similar conversations weeks or months ago, but still, now things were different, and it wasn’t a good, covetable kind of different.

First, the emotional stakes were now much higher, the intensity elevated. Brandon’s anger was palpably stronger, rivaling, or perhaps outrivaling, Jamie’s resilience. 

Second, it wasn’t just the emotional stakes. It was the relationship stakes, too. A few months before, if Brandon refused to accept Jamie’s help, it was painful, but still bearable: Brandon had been just a stranger who happened to need Jamie’s help, and Jamie was charitably trying to accomplish that. Yes, it pained him to be of no service to Brandon, it hurt his pride to know that whatever he would come up with was still not good enough to walk Brandon past his fears and demons – but at least it didn’t have immediate consequences on Jamie’s own life, his own hopes, dreams and plans for the future.

But now it wasn’t the same anymore. Everything had changed, because Brandon had eventually come back to Jamie. He had stayed with Jamie, he had showed Jamie that he cared, that he was attracted to Jamie after all, at least to some extent, at least enough to have sex with him and apparently enjoy it. 

They had been _together_. He had given Jamie _hope_. He had given Jamie an idea of a _future together_. And, worst of all, an idea of _being loved_.

And right now this weak, budding hope was being torn to shreds. If Brandon resisted a treatment, if he refused to get better, there would be no future together, pure brutal truth, hands down. That was for the one thing, and for the other – it seemed like it had been a misunderstanding on Jamie’s part all along, all this rubbish about ‘togetherness’ and ‘partnership’ and ‘being there for each other’ and ‘being in it together’. Brandon obviously didn’t see it like that: while Jamie had interpreted what was going on between the two of them as a declaration of commitment, to Brandon apparently nothing much had changed. To him, it was still like staying over at the place of some random guy willing to let him stay like that for reasons unspecified, only now they would also have sex and bathe together. 

It was like all this time they had been living in completely different realities.

Jamie seriously couldn’t decide which part of it agonized him more: the prospect of putting his gorgeous romantic plans on the shelf, when he had after those three lonely years decided to open up and risk giving love a try, or the shame of the realization that he had been the naïve needy ridiculous one, the fool to make himself believe that someone like Brandon would really mean to commit to him.

And so silence followed, underlined with that annoying noise of TV in the background. Jamie couldn’t find any more words to say. What words would suffice anyway? What lines, even those most eloquent and gripping, could do the job? What on earth could he still say so that Brandon wouldn’t respond with that robotic, unwavering _It’s none of your business_?

None and nothing, probably. Articulate as he was, for all of his skillful way with words, Jamie could now only think of gripping Brandon’s hand to make sure if it was still that sculpted beautiful hand that had given him with its touch so much amazement and delight so many times before – and of looking at Brandon pleadingly, cravingly, to make sure if that man sitting right there beside him was still that ailing, yet kind at his core, man that Jamie had let into his life so trustingly and with an open heart full of faith.

As he gripped Brandon’s hand, it still felt familiar: the stringy arch, the rough texture of the skin, the tenderness of taut muscles underneath. It still was the hand that Jamie had known and loved. 

So where had the man that he had known and loved gone, then? Because he clearly wasn’t there anymore. He had left in his stead that distant stranger who was looking now at Jamie and his desperate search for togetherness like some kind of nuisance.

“What?”, the stranger asked bluntly and disrespectfully, and Jamie could feel his hand grow numb and unresponsive inside his grip. Brandon hadn’t pulled away, but it wasn’t a display of trust on his part – it was more like his usual _I don’t even care enough to bother to do the wrestle_. His eyebrows, however, were tight knitted, and his lips were pursed, like the mere idea of being touched by Jamie like that disgusted him. 

Jamie didn’t need any more prompting to withdraw his hand.

Resting his forehead upon it instead, squeezing a lock of hair over his temple in a convulsive nervous manner, he explained wholeheartedly, each syllable a twinge of distress: “There must be something I can do!”

Brandon remained unconcerned, safe and unreachable on his isolated little island, even though physically he was just a few inches away. 

“I don’t know. What if there’s nothing?”

There was an odd tune to that question, apart from the fact that Brandon asking questions was a rarity in itself. When Jamie thought about it, it didn’t even sound like a question. It was more of a provocation. Or perhaps even scheming. 

Yes, that was it. Jamie suddenly got that sickening feeling, like Brandon was framing him into declaring _If that’s the case, then it’s impossible for us to go on like this, if I can’t help you or change you then we have to say goodbye_ – into essentially saying those things that Brandon apparently believed himself, but wanted to shoulder no responsibility for. It all seemed so dishonest of him, and deeply, deeply unfair.

And yet, even though on some subconscious level Jamie did realize what Brandon was up to, he fell into that trap to a degree, by honestly speaking his mind as to what Brandon’s question had caused him to feel like. He might have echoed exactly what Brandon wanted to hear, but with all the hurt stirred up inside him, he couldn’t help it.

“…Then I don’t know why we’re still together. Why be together if we can’t help each other out?”

As soon as he heard those words come out of his mouth, Jamie froze in dread, cold sweat sprinkling his hands and temples. What had he done now? Wasn’t that exactly what Brandon, this different inapproachable Brandon he had been dealing with that evening, intended to make him say? 

Hadn’t he just green-lit Brandon to reply with a _Well then, if you say so then it’s about time to end this_? 

Brandon, however, didn’t jump the chance. He only said “I don’t know, maybe sometimes you just can’t”, not a single word of reference to ending the relationship. 

Apparently Brandon wasn’t so quick to end this and leave Jamie, at least not yet, perhaps.

And after all the turmoil of this conversation, it was quite a relief that Brandon wouldn’t respond with anything drastic, in spite of the ‘permission’ Jamie had just given to him. Wiping his eyebrows in a fatigued gesture, Jamie was overcome with this emotion – perhaps premature, but much needed right then – that the worst was over for now. 

It was a near-miss, a dangerous curve they had barely got past. Jamie had to make sure the theme of breakup, even if only in potential or abstract terms, wouldn’t recur for some time now.

Also, he suddenly felt very tired. Tired with this conversation, tired with this whole story, and – that was a new one – tired with Brandon. He needed a break, and he needed some space. He also needed to conclude this whole talk, so that he would get rid of the awful feeling like he had only wasted his time and emotions on this.

“Brandon, I don’t believe this is the case with us. We haven’t even tried yet.” Set on bringing this talk to a closure – one that would be at least remotely satisfying – Jamie finished in a loop: “I’ll arrange you an appointment with that guy… alright?” 

He stressed that last word carefully, intently. He realized that without Brandon’s cooperation his hands would be tied, but he also knew by know that if he wanted any constructive solutions right now, asking for Brandon’s permission, or better yet: asking if he didn’t have any objections, was an easier way than asking for his opinion. 

Brandon took another gulp of his beer, looking blasé and indifferent, like the talk hadn’t had any impact on him at all.

“If you must”, he only said, sending Jamie’s way another one of those skewed looks. His stare wasn’t as aggressive as before, but it was tinted with that withdrawn sense of superiority. If Brandon had been somewhat more articulate, he might as well have said _No, it’s not alright, but you’re always playing the smart one and I’m tired of talking this shit with you. You always have to be right anyway_.

Later on Jamie discovered with a new painful awareness that while Brandon hadn’t said anything like that in the open, there was this ‘more articulate’ person who had, a person who knew Jamie that much more than Brandon did. It was Jessie. And this conversation with Brandon really made Jamie afraid that the pattern would repeat itself, that his genuine – or so he thought – attempts to help, to be of use, to make things right would be misunderstood, labeled as conceited, selfish and intrusive.

But that was for the future. Right now Jamie had decided to hold on to the faint hope that things would work out for them after this talk, and that turbulent as it might have been, it would bring on some constructive change. He also had decided to quit the mind-reading of Brandon, conveniently opting for an _If it’s not spoken out loud, then it’s not there_ attitude. 

“You won’t regret it”, he assured Brandon, the vigor of his newfound optimism ringing in his deep, succulent voice. It was funny how your perspective could shift within a dozen of minutes or so. Jamie had started this conversation with much higher expectations, and yet now he felt quite satisfied with having prompted, or should one say squeezed from Brandon, a neglectful _If you must_ , interpreted as a _yes_ , as well as with a couple of even more essential things, such as that they hadn’t broken up or killed each other off during those dozen minutes.

Jamie took a deep breath. Yes, it was a tough couple of minutes for both of them. Clashing with a loved one was never easy, and neither of them was especially skilled at arguing and negotiating. But they had come through, somehow. They had reached a shared conclusion, and now they were able to move forward from that point.

It must have been difficult for Brandon, really difficult and painful to bear this kind of talk – definitely no less than Jamie, even though for completely different reasons. Suddenly, after all had been said and done (or rather said and thought?), Jamie found himself overwhelmed with a renewed flow of love for this lonely man, so distrustful, so isolated in his agony, every second just one step away from giving up on his life, but still somehow finding the strength to carry on. For all those miserable reasons from his past Brandon resisted help – Jamie supposed Brandon thought he didn’t deserve it, and he must have also been plain scared of the pain that this help initially would bring – but still he was brave enough to reconsider and at least give it a try.

Prompted by this rapid turn of things inside his mind, Jamie gave Brandon a hug which was light yet tender, as he confessed in sincere gratitude, and equally honest admiration: “Thank you for saying yes”. 

In spite of Jamie’s display of how moved he was right now, Brandon gave Jamie a cold shoulder – quite literally, remaining rigid and detached like he wanted to say _Just let go of me already_ , his gaze fixed at the still blinking TV screen as he retorted with that absent, half-hearted “Sure”. 

Slapped by reality and bitterly disappointed, Jamie pulled back. Fighting off the acrid taste of rejection in his mouth, he somehow managed to squeeze through his clenched vocal chords: “One day you’re going to thank me for this”.

“Sure”, was Brandon’s unfailing mechanical response, as unmoved, as disgusted and as bored as ever. He had permanently broken his eye contact with Jamie, scarce as it might have been even up to this point. His head was pointed at the TV at an unnatural angle to make sure Jamie wouldn’t get any funny ideas that Brandon might be still seeing him. His back was slouched and slightly curved to separate himself from Jamie, his elbow marking a clear do-not-cross line. His lips were pressed together tightly, letting Jamie know he wouldn’t torture a single word more from those mouth. But he didn’t need to say no more, either. His whole body language seemed to scream in Jamie’s direction: _Are you done yet? Are you happy now? Then get the fuck out of my sight_. 

And yes, Jamie was pretty sure he had been done alright for now, in more than one way. Letting out a small ailed gasp, he walked to the kitchen, got himself a glass of water, and then moved back past Brandon to the bedroom, feeling dizzy and a little wobbly inside.

After he carefully closed the door behind him, he lay heavily on the bed, his heart pounding, his head weighing a tone. _What the fuck just happened?_

He took a few steady breaths and gripped the sheets tightly, trying to regain his composure. The matter seemed settled for now, but his body was still resounding with the turbulence. He was still being emotional about what he had just experienced, still very confused, and still feeling pretty much threatened, despite the matter seeming to have been settled for now, at least on the rational level.

After a while he sat up and decisively wiped the tears brimming in the corner of his eyes. Now was no time for getting so worked up, he thought. He couldn’t allow himself to get so shaky when there were things to be done and considered. Plus, he couldn’t let Brandon see him like that, in case Brandon happened to be interested in seeing him again that night. There was something so immensely embarrassing about letting Brandon see him cry over these things, something so inherently shameful in letting it show how powerless and vulnerable he felt against Brandon’s callous self-destructive attitude, that it naturally and truly was out of the question.

Yes, there was no time to wallow in self-pity. There was work to be done, such as calling that Ross guy, and somebody had to do it. Only Jamie knew how much he hated phone calls, especially to strangers, especially about private matters, but then Brandon’s well-being and their future life together depended on that, so what choice did Jamie have?

He had to plan everything now. Like what exactly to tell the guy over the phone, and in what detail he should describe the situation. He wouldn’t want to say anything Brandon wouldn’t reveal himself, after all; he wasn’t an inconsiderate meddlesome freak, contrary to what Brandon apparently was thinking. 

He also had to decide when to make that call. It was probably for the best if he did it when Brandon wasn’t around. It would be less stressful for them both and more comfortable for Jamie if he didn’t have to mind Brandon’s presence and censor what he was saying to the therapist out of the fear that Brandon might not approve of some part or all of it. So, he had to schedule the call for when Brandon was away. At work, possibly? It was still a few of days until Brandon started, and it would take a couple of another to arrange their timetables so that Jamie would be home while Brandon was at his new workplace, but it was no big deal. That much waiting they probably could still afford; the matter was not yet so urgent. Maybe it would even be for the best to let it breathe for a moment, to allow Brandon some space and let him get used to the idea, sort of come to terms with the inevitable.

Jamie’s resolutely focused, if somehow erratic, process of what he himself would call ‘practical things thinking’, was disrupted by the sounds from behind the wall. Or rather the lack of them: Jamie was instantly distracted when the monotonous TV noise suddenly went down, which most likely meant that Brandon had turned the TV off.

Jamie listened attentively for a while. He assumed he would hear Brandon’s footsteps directed someplace else in their small apartment. It was still quite early for the bedtime, but who knew, maybe Brandon would turn Jamie’s way and go to the bedroom to make up? Jamie could feel the nice rush of expectations run down his spine.

Still, nothing like that happened. True, Jamie in fact did hear the steps, but leading from the living room outwards and not towards the bedroom. It could still be the bathroom that Brandon was headed for, but Jamie couldn’t hear the sound of the door opening, either.  
Now alarmed, he rose up and opened the bedroom door ajar, just enough to discreetly stick his head out and check what was going on. 

He could see Brandon in the doorway, facing him with his back, putting on his shoes and overcoat with hurried, jerking movements.

Even before Jamie could process what he was seeing, his heart started to throb, the blood trying to pound its way out through his temples. He could see and feel everything in slow motion, unfolding inch by inch right before his eyes, just like really scared people did. 

“Where are you going?”, he asked straightforwardly, deliberately, taking what seemed to him an almost inhuman effort to keep his voice down and calm.

Brandon didn’t bother to look Jamie’s way.

“Getting some more beer”, he muttered casually, and without waiting for Jamie’s response, within fractions of seconds he was already out the door.

Hardly coping with the reality of what was going on, Jamie left the bedroom, closed the door, leant against it and took a few seconds to breathe heavily, nervously, trying not to collapse under the tension.

Once he had regained some clarity of thinking, the first thing he did was go to the kitchen – just in case, just to make sure.

What he had found, pulling the fridge door with a twitching movement, was that the inside part of the door was full-packed with a shiny display of beer bottles Brandon had bought when they were out shopping together in the mall merely two days before, which Jamie remembered vividly and precisely.

He shut the fridge with a loud thud, violently, almost furiously. Strangely enough, he wasn’t exactly sure what he was feeling, or if he really was feeling much at all. 

Maybe it was some kind of defense mechanism, because to feel everything all at once now would probably crush him. 

With no feelings to fill the silent void, Jamie had been left with just his thoughts. 

And all he could think of right now was how it all was his fault.


	3. August: Feeling so shady lately

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Confused about what's been going on lately in their relationship, but also inside himself, Jamie is desperate to get Brandon into treatment. With Brandon's reluctance and stubborn denial that he has any problems, however, Jamie's efforts do not seem to stand much chance of success. Meanwhile, Brandon has been showing signs of relapse into the active addiction - or is it just Jamie's paranoia?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER (finally) COMPLETE.
> 
> I'm going to update this thing bit by bit, or else you'd have to wait for the complete chapter until the next movie awards season (let's hope the geezers in Hollywood will be more generous to James and Fassy then than they were this year =^=). Stay tuned for more parts.
> 
> UPDATE
> 
> Meet [Terry](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/e9/7e/f2/e97ef25eb772ba0b04bc9ee6826d1552.jpg), the most incorrigible and psychotic therapist in the business. Terry is clueless as to why his reputation is so uninviting (must be the underhanded ploys by the obviously jealous and inferior competition), but as for the time being Jamie has dumped him, he'll be more than happy to assist you in your own daily struggles. (Jamie's best advice: don't.)
> 
> UPDATE
> 
> Our bramie family finally expands!  
> Meet [Jessie + The Smolder + The Smile ](http://hdwallpaperbackgrounds.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Smiling-Face-Of-Jake-Gyllenhaal-Desktop-Wallpapers.jpg). While we're at it, also meet [Javi ](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/38/1b/d2/381bd28cd4893f2bae0a1a54b5618f23.jpg)(Jamie tried his best to find an utterly unattractive, repulsive, turn-off picture of Javi/Diego Luna - does it bear mentioning that he failed miserably?).

It would have seemed that not much more happened on that lonely night in late July. 

In fact, the point might have been in what had not happened rather than in what had.

Brandon returned after about two hours. Jamie was then already in bed, struggling to be lying down when he knew well it was no use to even try to fall asleep. 

Two hours wasn’t a lot when it came to Brandon’s, well, potential for disappearing. Still, it felt like an eternity to Jamie, each minute paid with the ransom of stomach cramps and the hurt of a heart violently pounding in the ribcage. Thoughts of how stupid he had been to bring up that therapy, which turned out to have made things worse than if he had simply let them be, were entwined with obsessive visions of what Brandon could be doing right now and who he was with.

Jamie’s imagination was running wild. Anger and jealousy would fade every once in a while, paving the way for fear, a very tangible fear of what Brandon might be up to. If the last time he had done that he hurt himself so badly, what could he come up with this time?

Many times Jamie was on the verge of grabbing his cell phone and texting or calling Brandon; he would reach out his hand, take the telephone, enter the text window or address book, and only then give up, putting the phone back. The memory of Brandon’s last disappearance was the single thing that was holding him back – the sober voices inside his head telling him _What’s the point? If he’s really got it going on again, you won’t reach him anyway_ , and the recollection of humiliation and rejection you have to face when you reach out in spite of all the reasons not to, only to be ignored.

So instead Jamie just counted the minutes, and waited. He tried to convince himself he didn’t give a fuck and would fall asleep instead, but he couldn’t. It was all too confusing, and at the same time, scary.

When he finally heard the door lock crack open, suddenly his emotions crystallized; he felt a peculiar blend of relief and anger. 

He got up and listened for a while, tense on the inside and unsure if he really wanted to see Brandon right away. Did he really want any new reasons to be shocked or worried so badly? And even if he did, he still had no idea what to say to Brandon, or how to talk to him at all.

That strangest sensation from hours before had remained with Jamie – that unspeakable feeling, upsetting and repulsive, that the Brandon that was around right now wasn’t the man Jamie had known and cared about. He was suddenly a stranger Jamie didn’t know how to approach, how to feel about, and what to think of.

Ironically, right now the man who had just entered their apartment seemed less familiar to Jamie than that miserable beaten-up guy he once had accidentally met in a club and then had sex with. With that man from months before, Jamie felt connection and affinity, as well as that certainty that he could be of value to him. With this man here he only felt like a nuisance, like a bother, like a dispensable, annoying fun spoiler.

Although maybe it wasn’t really about Brandon. Maybe what it was about was Jamie’s fantasy. The stranger he felt connected to was someone Jamie had made up for his own comfort and delight, someone who had never existed. The stranger he felt now so isolated from may have been the real Brandon, one who had just managed to break through Jamie’s illusions.

A cold sting of fear was back, piercing Jamie’s chest all the way through, making it hard to breathe. What it that was the truth? What if Brandon he had cherished and loved never really existed? What if it all had been nothing but delusion propped by convenient circumstances and comfortable misunderstandings?

This fear was worst of them all. The fear that Brandon had never existed, that their bond, their world, their togetherness had all been a fake… it was worse than Brandon’s addiction, Brandon’s being out of control, Brandon’s refusal to get treatment; worse than their unforeseeable, shaky future and the dread of what may still happen if they just let things go on like this. No, there was nothing worse, there could be nothing worse than a reality where Jamie’s Brandon simply wasn’t there.

So Jamie suppressed that dread as fast as he could, and instantly talked himself out of it. It was just too much to handle.

Although still subjected to the unpleasant tingling in his stomach, Jamie decisively got up and trudged out of the bedroom to confront Brandon.

As it turned out, Brandon had gone straight to the bathroom, not bothering to utter a conciliatory _Hi_ or _I’m back_ – which wasn’t much a surprise under the circumstances, but still was quite a disappointment nonetheless. 

Jamie leant against the living room doorway, and from that pos he greeted the apartment with an array of quick glances. There were Brandon’s shoes by the front door, there was Brandon’s summer coat neatly hanged on a wall hook, there was, lo!, a fresh new bottle beer pack in the kitchen corner. A quiet swish of shower running in the background served as a soundtrack for this theatrically still scene. _I guess there’ll be no bath time today_ , thought Jamie, but oddly enough, he didn’t mind. After what had happened between them that evening, he didn’t feel like getting cozy and cuddly with Brandon in the bathtub, either.

A different thing was of greater concern to him – and it was like a slap in the face for him to suddenly discover how ferociously, how intently he gave himself into thinking about it, how all-consuming it was with both his emotions and his energy.

_I wonder if he’s been jerking off again._

Never before had he resorted to thinking about it so straightforwardly and calling it so bluntly even to himself. This seemed like an undeniable signal that something had snapped between him and Brandon, something had happened and it was irreversible.

The suspicions. The mistrust. The cold, judgmental tension swirling up in his stomach. What kind of bad dream it was that Jamie had suddenly woken up into?

Fretful and upset, Jamie hovered around the living room for a while, unsure of what to do with himself. He finally settled on the sofa, pulling one of the cats to his lap. Scratching and stroking the fluffy purring creature, he found at least some amount of comfort, enough to carry on waiting for Brandon without envisioning what he was doing there under that shower, without trying to guess what or who he was thinking about, and without getting all worked up about what Jamie himself should say or do now. He did what he could to refocus, to breathe steadily and keep his mind on the sensation of the cat’s warm fur as it rubbed itself against Jamie’s fingers and arms. Ruminations would get him nowhere. 

To a degree, Jamie succeeded at staying present and quieting his mind. He even managed not to check the time to see how long Brandon had been in the bathroom, and assess if it was still a reasonable duration time of an evening shower. 

Still, the mere sound of the door opening, preceded by the silencing of the rustle of the running water, made Jamie virtually jump in his seat.

By the time Brandon nonchalantly dropped into the room, Jamie was almost out of breath. His own nervousness made him all the more surprised at Brandon’s apparent ease. 

Brandon looked fresh, calm and laid back, annoyingly good-looking in that well-matched ash-grey T-shirt of his that he used as his nightwear. He didn’t make it seem like anything special was going on. It was like to him, it was just another regular Sunday night; as if he didn’t remember that anything worrying or tense had happened between the two of them. Or maybe it hadn’t? Maybe it all had been just one more fictitious vision made up by Jamie’s creative imagination? Jamie was all puzzled now, doubting his own perceptions and almost his own sanity. 

And Brandon only underscored that confusion by throwing a casual, non-assuming “Hey”, and giving Jamie a quick, emotionless, lukewarm glance before he headed for another beer in his kitchen stash ( _he’s really been drinking too much today_ , thought Jamie to himself as a side note; one part of deeper layers of his consciousness thought how he wished that had been the biggest problem they had, and another called for caution, arguing they really didn’t need another unhealthy compulsion of Brandon’s to deal with). It was difficult to believe that just a couple of hours before those very same mild, peaceful eyes had been so seething and scathing. 

Jamie was speechless, and remained so for a few seconds, afraid that to open his mouth would mean to choke on anxiety and bewilderment. The thought that he and Brandon apparently were living in two different realities struck him once more with the force of a thunder.

“I was so worried, Brandon”, he finally exclaimed, his tone vehement, carried by the fast-paced stream of his blood. His voice was loud and even, but it shook slightly when he was saying Brandon’s name, the trembling telling a whole story about Jamie’s anger, disappointment, guilt and worry all contained within those few hours of that evening. He hadn’t planned for his feelings to be shown so clearly, but apparently he couldn’t control it, either.

Apparently surprised at the forcefulness ringing in Jamie’s voice, Brandon glimpsed at Jamie through the kitchen door. He looked perfectly innocuous, perhaps even slightly amused.

“I just went to get some beer”, he said with his eyebrows slightly raised, a face which would probably go unnoticed if it had been any other person, but which with Brandon’s usual facial expressionlessness looked almost theatrical. It was like what he really was trying to say was something along the lines of _What’s your problem?_ It was also remarkable how he adopted that matter-of-fact explanatory tone, like Jamie hadn’t remembered what had been Brandon’s excuse for going outside alone at that time.

Jamie let out an inaudible gasp through his nose. He felt he had no energy left to deal with that now, to deal with Brandon now, to break through his denial. After all, it was Jamie’s attempts to unravel that denial earlier that night that had exhausted him so much in the first place.

“I see”, he only nodded then, mirroring Brandon’s impersonal tone. He felt an unpleasant tickle in his stomach at the thought that he was like a puppet right now, playing along with Brandon’s rules of this strange game – because yes, its rules were much easier to figure out than its purpose. 

Deciding he had had enough for one day, he got up from the sofa; exhaustion kept him calmer now, but he was no less confused than before. 

“I’m going back to bed”, he added on his way back to bedroom, implying he had been trying to fall asleep but couldn’t. He just wanted Brandon to know that, and in his naivety, maybe even to respond to that – yet he couldn’t find any better, more straightforward way to say what he meant.

For his part, Brandon remained unimpressed. He replied with his default “Sure”, maintaining that perfectly clueless look on his face – that look which usually managed to charm Jamie head to toes, but right now had the most amazing effect of further spinning the reel of rage deep inside Jamie’s mind. “Good night, then”, added Brandon unperturbed as he sat down in front of his laptop. Jamie figured it was a clear signal for him to go. Brandon definitely wouldn’t like it if he was being disturbed while trying to browse his favorite porn directories and sex chats, would he? 

“Good night”, Jamie hissed back, a renewed wave of anger still bottling inside his throat. Resigned and alone, he went to the bedroom and deliberately closed the door behind his back, wondering how he managed to keep this façade, this cheerful pretense of everything being all right and in order. 

He had been thinking he was just trying to live his life as well as he could, giving it the most he could. He had those dreams – dreams of a relationship, of a commitment, of belonging to someone and with someone – and he had thought that he was only trying to make these dreams reality, planning out step by step how to reach them.

And now here he was, suddenly playing this odd kind of game that Brandon had imposed on him, a play pretend full of dishonesty and unspoken insistence that things were never what they seemed. Jamie didn’t really know how he had got there. More importantly, he also didn’t know how to get out.

He lay heavily on his back, not even caring to pull the blanket over his body. His head weighed a tone, and yet he felt strangely itchy on the inside, like his body couldn’t contain his anxious, upset mind. 

Suddenly he found he couldn’t stop thinking about what Brandon was doing right there behind that wall – not in just general terms, such as ‘he must be watching porn again’ or ‘maybe he’s out there chatting with some pervert’, but really specific, detailed scenes, unfolding their ugliness before Jamie one thought after another. His mind was living the fantasy of being inside Brandon’s head and watching the world with Brandon’s eyes. Within his own limits, meaning with the limited resources of knowledge on kinky sex that Jamie had and could draw upon, Jamie projected the vivid pictures of what exactly Brandon was seeing, what and who he was fantasizing about, and what he was doing all the while. It was horrifying and compelling at the same time.

Jamie’s imagination was overflowing with visions he didn’t really want there, but which seduced him nevertheless with this strange, narcotic power. There was something intensely appealing in how obnoxious they were; they had that dangerous appeal of playing with fire.

He found those thoughts repulsive and unhealthy, and yet he couldn’t stop them, strangely turned on by the harmful and humiliating reality they suggested. It didn’t really make him feel sexual, it wasn’t something he would ever want to be a part of, and yet he only shook the spell off when he had felt his own hand slide down his underwear to touch the groin.

He quickly withdrew the hand, exerting a lot of self-control to stop the impulse and to cool down. Then he turned to lie on his stomach and buried his face in the pillows, paralyzed with self-loathing for what he had just been doing and what he was about to do.

Somewhere in the back of his mind he wondered if that was what usually felt like to be Brandon. If it was, then Jamie could only be overwhelmed with a new kind of compassion for him. A lifetime of feeling that way must have been a nightmare.

He felt like he had been infected. He really didn’t want that. He didn’t want to be part of that crazy world that Brandon had made for himself. He was supposed to drag Brandon away from there, not the other way round.

An amazing thing about this was that Jamie was aware that this strange state of arousal he had just experienced had nothing to do with him wanting Brandon, the real, tangible, human Brandon he had been sharing his bed with for these few weeks. On the contrary: he realized he didn’t feel any desire for Brandon right now, and that he wouldn’t want to have sex with him – after all that had happened that evening, he would actually be repelled by the idea.

It wasn’t about the yearning for another human being, then, certainly not about the connection and harmony that had been Jamie’s idealized longing. It was about some kind of a hidden darken force, something subconscious and unsightly, rooted in the marriage of fear, risk-induced thrills, and ungrounded fantasy. 

And deep inside him, for the first time, Jamie also felt afraid. Not just for Brandon, not just for his well-being and recovery, not just for their relationship and their future together. 

He was now afraid for himself.

***

A new day had come and things went back to normal somehow, even though Jamie wasn’t so sure what ‘normal’ meant anymore, nor could he trust so wholeheartedly – or so ignorantly, one would say – that things were now the way they should have been. There was this new kind of doubt in the way Jamie approached his being with Brandon now, an essential questioning of what exactly they were really doing and what they were doing it for. 

It wasn’t now just a matter of _let’s fix Brandon, let’s give him a job, heal his addiction and get him to like himself, and then we can live happily ever after_ ; it wasn’t simple as that anymore. 

Still, all the doubt on Jamie’s part notwithstanding, they had to carry on with their life on a daily basis, and that was precisely what they did. Jamie wouldn’t take up the subject of what had happened the other evening anymore. He didn’t think it would lead them anywhere, and he really didn’t want to go through another cycle of rebuffing and denial concluded by Brandon’s shutting him out. To pretend everything had gone as planned seemed like the lesser evil.

It was a lucky circumstance that Brandon had begun his new job exactly at that time. This had given him some new incentives along with new duties; new ways, so to say, to get busy. Jamie also thought it was nice to be able to talk to Brandon about his day and get some news about what Brandon had been doing in more specific terms, to learn he was now doing something creative, something that required at least a degree of competence and involvement on his part, rather than repeating their so far typical mini-dialogue of “So how was your day?” – “Alright, I guess”, “And what were you doing?” – “Nothing in particular”.

Going back to work filled Brandon with a new kind of energy. It was a very pleasant and, in a way, deceitfully reassuring sight: Brandon with all those new ideas, Brandon suddenly feeling free to and even happy to talk about what he had been doing, Brandon creating new projects on his laptop and making sketches (that was the first occasion ever for Jamie to see how skillful Brandon was in drawing, leading the pencil with a sure, steady hand) instead of just going through the motions in front of the computer or TV, or conversely, rushing headlong into obsessive execution of chores, cooking overly healthy meals or cleaning spaces from their only microscopic traces of dirt.

A part of Jamie watched Brandon become this way and was filled with that warm, fuzzy feeling that everything was alright, just as it should be. Then Jamie would submerge into the fantasy of their private little world expanding and growing, things turning out as initially planned and their relationship transitioning into maturity seamlessly, with no complications along the way. He was almost ready to forgive and forget, to jump into Brandon’s arms – if they would open up for him just as readily, that is – and pretend like that sorry night had never happened.

But in the end, he couldn’t. There was still that other part of him, the inner skeptic that reminded him that that eventful night had been reality and not a bad dream. It was due to that part that Jamie internally kept his distance, no matter how happy and optimistic the sight of a better-functioning Brandon would seem to make him. 

Something about his naïve, hot-headed faith in things miraculously working out fine had changed irreversibly.

So on the inside, Jamie was full of reserve. It was better that way. It was convenient and, more importantly, bearable. Getting all romantic and involved and risking that Brandon would hurt him all over again was not.

Their bedroom time together had turned awkward for a while, too. That evening they had a fight Brandon never came to join Jamie in bed – which Jamie was quite grateful for, because sharing this tight space with Brandon after all that had been said, thought and done would have been uncomfortable, to say the least. On the other hand, the following day everything appeared to have turned back to normal – save for Jamie still feeling the need to keep his distance and cling to the wall as away from Brandon as he could get, and Brandon for his part seeming completely oblivious and uninterested, like the previous two months of their sex life had never happened. 

This clumsy phase of ‘let’s pretend there had never been anything going on for us’ continued for another couple of days, just enough for Brandon to get used to his new work-related tasks and pace of day. 

Jamie soon recognized it as a clear change for the better. Apparently, Brandon had finally grown ready to accept new challenges in his everyday life; instead of the blasé sense of an uneventful existence he usually exuded, he was now quite curious, at times even enthusiastic, about what he was doing, who he was doing it with, or what and who he was doing it for. Jamie had found it increasingly more pleasant to be able to listen to Brandon talk for a longer while about his job, to see him actually hype up about something, his eyes sparkling with involvement in something productive , as opposed to an unhealthy, secretive arousal. 

Thus, Jamie genuinely enjoyed Brandon talking about his work life and quite cheerfully introducing him to the details of his new job, something they had never done and known before. It was so refreshing to be immersed in Brandon’s talking instead of busily trying to find a topic that would interest him, entertain him, and elicit some kind of response that would reduce the often uncomfortable and embarrassing silence, uncomfortable and embarrassing at least to Jamie. 

It somehow escaped Jamie’s attention that as they were, they could never seem to find the right balance, with Brandon either not talking at all or taking all the floor exclusively to himself; Jamie really didn’t seem to notice that at the time, amazed with the novel pleasure he derived from just listening to Brandon’s deep, soothing voice.

The soft and warm way it felt, with Brandon sharing the recent fact and thoughts from his own life and Jamie simply being there and contributing to the contact with his active listening, would gradually crack the icy wall that the ‘serious talk’ incident had erected between the two of them. Yes, it would warm Jamie up to Brandon back, even if in a slightly changed manner than before. At the very core he had remained securely restrained and wasn’t letting go of that easily, but on the surface the thought of laying down with Brandon, of getting close to him, of exposing himself to him wasn’t that dreadful anymore.

So day after day Jamie convinced himself more and more of the enjoyable notion that the resentful stranger from the other night had disappeared, and instead, an approachable, even somewhat receptive Brandon resurfaced.

It was like now Jamie could forgive Brandon for the hurt and humiliation he had caused him – except that ‘forgiveness’ was far from being an accurate concept here. After all, Brandon had done nothing to earn Jamie’s forgiveness. In fact, how could he? They hadn’t even discussed that unlucky event, much less negotiated anything about it. Jamie deliberately wouldn’t let Brandon know how upset he was about the events of that night, because seriously, why rock the boat again? He had barely recovered by now, and frankly, at times he still felt seasick. And he wasn’t a naïve young adult anymore to believe someone would change their behavior for his sake by somehow having miraculously read his mind.

Non-idealistic and unromantic as it was, it had therefore much more to do with ‘forgetting’ and ‘ignoring’ than with actual forgiveness. It was essentially about Jamie deciding to believe in this suddenly more sympathetic Brandon, to bury his mistrust, to overlook Brandon’s now well-proven potential for deception and cruelty. He was determined to stick to the bright side while he could see any. For the time being, that was about the best he could do.

For the time being, until he could get Brandon to see that goddamn therapist.

And thus, over the course of the first week of August, which coincided with Brandon’s first week at his new job, in spite of his underlying reservations, Jamie let himself get closer to Brandon again. He allowed himself to spend time with him, as well as to enjoy that time. And that decision naturally evolved into an internal permission on Jamie’s part to attempt being intimate with Brandon once more.

Jamie waited with that call until the weekend, when they both were relaxed and at leisure. The time was genuinely right: they spent a really nice Saturday together, just talking, listening to Brandon’s vinyl jazz records, playing with their hamster trio, and then playing with their cats, and then the other way round, and cooking and doing their weekly chores in the meantime. 

In the afternoon, they went to do some shopping. Brandon celebrated the resuming of his professional life by enhancing his wardrobe with a number of new astounding summer shirts, and even being precious enough to present Jamie with a yet another posh shirt, this time made of light blue denim that made a classy match with Jamie’s eyes. 

Actually, Brandon’s gift extended far beyond just paying at the register; he was also the one who had picked a number shirts from the display, decided that Jamie should try them because they looked like they had been made specifically for him, offered insightful comments about the way Jamie looked in every piece, and then helped Jamie make the choice which one they were going to buy. It felt to Jamie like he, the notorious shoulder-shrugging fashion ignorant, had earned himself a personal stylist out of the blue. Brandon wasn’t just choosing nice clothes for him or making him look nice in them – most importantly, he made Jamie look handsome in his own eyes and feel good about himself. 

On moments like these, it occurred to Jamie that in his own way Brandon did care about him and did have his own peculiar ways to show it. And for his part, Jamie did his best to appreciate it as it was. 

After having some great time at the mall, which also included a visit in a coffee shop to drink to Brandon’s successful wardrobe purchases with a delicious latte, they spontaneously decided to go to the movies. It wasn’t the first time they went to the cinema together, but given the hard time they had just gone through over the last couple of days, it sure seemed like a special occasion to Jamie. Brandon even went as far as to let Jamie pick the movie, and did his best not to wince too much when Jamie had gone for – a no-brainer in his case – the fresh new romantic comedy _Crazy Stupid Love_. 

For his part, Jamie wouldn’t let Brandon’s lack of enthusiasm discourage him; judging by the synopsis and the cast, Jamie was rather sure it would turn out to be a movie they both would enjoy, and he was right. Brandon apparently found the character played by Ryan Gosling relatable, and it was pure magic, not to mention relief, to watch him actually burst out in laughter on at least a few occasions. 

His laughter had the sweetest, softly resounding tone, and when he flashed those gorgeous teeth he hardly ever showed on a daily basis even in a light smile, Jamie would catch himself distracted from what was going on up on the screen, hypnotized by the compelling view at the seat to his left. 

They even had a sort of a discussion when the movie was over, as Jamie had justly sensed from Brandon’s responses during the show that this time chances were their exchange of comments would exceed their basic two-liner (“So, how did you like it?” – “Okay, I guess”) pattern. Jamie went as much as asked Brandon how he liked the relationship between Ryan Gosling’s Jacob and Emma Stone’s Hannah, and wasn’t so much disappointed – he found it quite amusing, in fact – when Brandon deemed it “rather cute, but unrealistic”. When Jamie asked him to elaborate on that opinion, Brandon declared:

“I don’t know, I mean, this whole thing, it’s like they’re trying to tell you that spending your whole life with just one person is the only right way to go, and that it’s wrong to go and have some fun”.

Jamie smiled to himself. The way he asserted them, Brandon’s views reflected his denial and his possibly lifelong idealization of the superficial playboy lifestyle all too clearly.

“Do you mean you don’t believe you could spend your whole life with just one person and still have fun?”

Brandon looked back at him bewildered and slightly patronizingly, like he had been talking to a child, before he dryly responded “No, not really, I don’t”.

 _But it’s exactly what you’re trying to do right now, isn’t it?_ , thought Jamie as he silently smiled another knowing smile. 

To him, there was nothing alarming in Brandon’s declared attitudes, not a thing to worry about – because wasn’t it deeds that spoke louder than words? And that Saturday, Brandon’s deeds showed clearly that Brandon cared and that he wanted to give them a chance… or at least, that was what Jamie had chosen to remember lest something should come up and spoil their impromptu little date. 

Apparently, Jamie’s denial was no less efficient than that of Brandon’s.

Overall, however, it really was a lovely day, romantic in its own way and feeling exactly like a fantastic date, seducing Jamie with that special aura of being together and being a couple. And even with those fantasy implications put out of the picture, it had simply been a pleasant time. It had been weeks since Jamie last enjoyed Brandon’s companion so sincerely and effortlessly, and Jamie thought it a safe bet that Brandon felt the same. 

Jamie hadn’t planned any of these – it wasn’t a result of a meticulous scheming of how to make a perfect day that would lead to a perfect mood and a perfect setting ending in a perfect night. He had only thought he would give it a try to spend a whole day with Brandon and see how it would work. It worked really well, and Jamie could feel his desire for that man who shared his apartment and his bed return, coming on strong.

Naturally, after a week like the one they had just had, there was some anxiety in Jamie, too. What if for Brandon, things really had changed permanently? What if now Brandon wouldn’t want to sleep with Jamie anymore, what if after last week he decided that sex wasn’t relevant in their relationship anymore… or worse, that their relationship wasn’t relevant anymore? Deep inside Jamie was touching one of his greatest and least desirable fears that he had being with Brandon: that in this pairing he was the only one to whom their sex life mattered and made any difference. It seemed like Brandon could take it or leave it – Jamie had actually been still amazed that Brandon would take it every so often, given how unimaginative and inept Jamie was in bed – and now that things had become a bit more complicated, with Jamie intruding on Brandon’s sex compulsion and past trauma, saying things that Brandon didn’t appreciate and doing things that Brandon was repelled by, what could possibly stop Brandon from leaving it?

And on the other hand, that was precisely the reason why Jamie had chosen to take the initiative and resume their sex life, his insecurities and lack of confidence notwithstanding. He feared… more so, he knew – that if he didn’t, then Brandon wouldn’t, too.

He was the one who cared more, so he had to take charge too, as simple as that.

And, to expose himself to rejection in the process – but that he was perfectly familiar with. As a matter of fact, he was so used to being rejected or to the looming prospects of rejection that he didn’t even pay attention to it anymore, or consider it in any way upsetting or unfair.

And now it seemed like the right moment to try to mend what they had broken the week before. 

Following this line of thinking, Jamie suggested to Brandon that they could take a bath together, making an effort to make his offer sound as calm and casual as possible.

He was nevertheless greatly relieved when Brandon agreed, responding in an equally casual and calm manner.

So they took that bath, and even though it had initially been awkward and somewhat forced, they both quickly relaxed to each other’s proximity and presence, like they both had remembered they really had nothing to prove – that they could just be themselves and trust one another.

Soon it felt to Jamie like their week-long break hadn’t affected them at all. All felt right and exactly like it had used to feel. They were laid-back and nurturing with their touch, and comfortable with each other’s companionship. 

And this spontaneously transitioned to what followed in their bedroom, too. Jamie was even quite eager to top this time, without waiting for any encouragement, be it implied or explicit, on Brandon’s part. He simply supposed it would make Brandon happy, and since it appeared that so far Jamie had succeeded in making Brandon happy as far as this evening was concerned, then why break the lucky streak? It made Jamie feel adequate and in control, and so it felt good – little could parallel that.

***

Jamie was unable to fall for the apparent normalcy that had returned to his relationship with Brandon – or rather, he was consciously cautious not to. Yes, it would have been so delightful if he could simply forget who Brandon was or what was at stake, if he could just let go and get lost in this idyllic little romance-like thing that they had. It would have been, but it wasn’t meant to be. Jamie was too afraid to allow that.

Too afraid to let Brandon’s compulsions escalate in the shadow, unbeknownst to him. Too afraid to let the hurt of their recent confrontation repeat itself. Too afraid to lose Brandon and what little they had built by now, when he had all those plans for their future that reached so much further than that.

And on a side note, as something that Jamie never really gave much thought to because to him it virtually went without saying, he also couldn’t imagine they would go on like this in a longer run because of his own needs and visions what a dream relationship should be like. If they were to stay together and make it permanent, he needed Brandon to change – not just in the sex addiction department. 

He wanted Brandon to be more responsive, to become a better listener, maybe more sharing, more invested in Jamie’s life and interests. He also wished their sex would change into something closer to their very first night, with Brandon as the seductive top with most if not all of the initiative. Jamie had presumed all along that the way their sex was right now was only provisional, a result of Brandon being insecure and unused to sharing his bed with someone emotionally close to him, and that it would change once Brandon got better.

For now Jamie had been doing just fine not voicing his preferences and sort of hanging in there while taking care of Brandon’s wants and needs one-sidedly. He wasn’t uncomfortable with it at all. He was quite used to postponing his needs and putting himself second. And, even though his relationship with Jessie and a number of his friendships had proven miserable likely for this very reason, Jamie was still a big believer in his give and it shall be given to you motto he lived by. 

Most importantly, this self-chosen deprivation, Jamie would tell himself, was only temporary. 

It all hinged on Brandon’s recovery, right? Brandon would get better one day, he would become all he was meant to be, getting rid of his selfishness and neediness that fueled his affliction right now. Then he would have the resources and the will to take care of Jamie in turn. 

Jamie genuinely trusted it really was that simple.

What it all ultimately came down to, however, was that in order to achieve that, they first had to get Brandon to get better. Which was why one peaceful Tuesday afternoon, which Jamie could spend back home after a night shift while Brandon was away for work, Jamie finally grabbed the telephone and bravely called the clinic where doctor Terrence Ross ran his private practice. 

He found himself quite convincing in keeping his composure against the nerve-wracking tension inside his stomach as he explained to the nice secretary that yes, he did want to make an appointment, but first he would like to talk to dr. Ross in person. And preferably over the phone rather than leaving the matter to a less direct form of contact, such as e-mail or internet messengers. The lady sounded a bit confused (“but you can talk to Terry about anything you would like during your first actual appointment, too”), but luckily, she was kind and reasonable enough to ask Jamie to call back in about two hours time, when dr. Ross had his break scheduled.

Nervously checking with his clock if Brandon wouldn’t be back by the time Jamie was able to finish his conversation with the therapist – Jamie still had problems picturing Brandon listening on while Jamie was trying to fix his session – for the first time Jamie had begun to consider the possibility that trying to make that appointment on Brandon’s behalf would cost him more effort than it was worth it. Perhaps it would have been better if Jamie just let that be and allowed Brandon to take care of his own stuff himself.

He scoffed to himself upon those thoughts. _Let Brandon take care of his own stuff_ , right. Because what other options did Jamie exactly have? Would Brandon ever care to as much as dial the number of that goddamn clinic if left to his own devices? No way. For that, Brandon was still a little too happy with the entertainment and relief which his addictive behavior would bring him, and a little too ready to instantly forget about the devastating consequences his addiction and his unhealed past brought upon his life every now and then. 

The brutal truth – all the more brutal with the way Brandon had made it clear to Jamie back on that miserable evening – was that Brandon wasn’t even in the slightest as interested in his own recovery and well-being as Jamie was. Given the manner in which things had turned out that night, Brandon was probably convinced it was a generous act of benevolence on his part that he had not explicitly forbidden Jamie to go and make that appointment.

Almost two weeks had passed since then, and Jamie was somewhat surprised to find himself still seething by merely thinking about it, especially about how he cared about Brandon’s health and sanity that much more than Brandon himself, as well as how he was willing to really do something, anything about it that much more.

With a few deep breaths, Jamie calmed down and went about doing his own things to pass the time until he could redial the number of the clinic. When he did, the secretary announced gleefully “Yes, I believe I can transfer your call right now”, and in a number of seconds he heard that clear, crisp tone of a man’s voice. 

“Hi there, it’s Terry.” 

The voice had an overall pleasant quality and was easy on the ears, making Jamie want to listen to the man some more – which was a good prognosis assuming he would become Brandon’s therapist. 

It also had some kind of an edge about it, a sort of self-defining confidence which made it both trustworthy and elusive at the same time. It was like while inviting you, embracing you even, it was setting itself apart from you, producing a deeply surprising experience in the process.

A little taken aback by the man’s beautiful voice as well as by the way he introduced himself, Jamie stammered in a confirmation-seeking manner: “Uh… Dr. Ross?”.

There was a pause of tense confusion on the other end of the line, followed by a genuine if a little ego-tripping guffaw.　

“Well… damn right?”, the said dr. Ross replied finally, sounding like Jamie’s was in the Top Ten of the most amusing lines he had ever heard. “Or what should I say? Seriously, I had no idea there still were people calling me that. Dr. Ross, now that makes me proud, that’s a real positive change from the usual ‘that jerk’ or ‘that sick motherfucker’ bunch. I owe you a big thanks, you know?”

For a moment, Jamie was breath-taken – and that, combined with the assumed therapist’s love of consecutive one-liners and his apparent infatuation with his own voice, made it a little difficult for Jamie to break into this monologue and turn it into a conversation.

The unceremonious, or actually downright disrespectful tone of the man’s words, combined with the (very unprofessional, if someone asked Jamie his opinion) undoing of the first contact distance appropriate for this setting, made Jamie wonder if that was the ‘difficult’ part of Terry Ross’ reputation, or if it was just him. 

Unable as he was to hide his embarrassment, Jamie eventually managed to squeeze somewhere in between Terry Ross’ loud and exuberant lines “…I mean, that’s how you were referred to me”. He could hear his own voice reveal his uncertainty: was it some kind of a game that the man was playing, and if so, then was Jamie getting the rules right?

One thing was for sure: Terry Ross wasn’t going to make it any easier for Jamie. 

And his next reply was an official confirmation: he was a live action incarnation of an internet troll.

“You mean, there are people who talk about me with…well… other people? Does that make me a celebrity? Ha! I always knew I’d get there someday. And those poor, poor folks of little faith wouldn’t ever believe me, mind you.”

Still disoriented as to whether Terry was just being a jerk, or if he was an actual jerk, or if it really was the perfectly innocent, perfectly unaware way he was, Jamie decided to brace himself and move on to the substantial talk, rather than wasting any more time on the futile, goalless approximation of small-talks.

“…I… I’m certain you have some makings of celebrity in you, for sure”, he muttered uneasily, praying that this time Terry wouldn’t overlay what Jamie had to say with another pseudo-witty quip. “A-anyway, there’s this matter I’d like to discuss with you.”

Luckily, this time Terry restrained himself only to one more short know-all comment, without forcing on Jamie another self-satisfied monologue. “I must say that’s very smart of you!” 

To his own awe, Jamie suddenly felt he had grown increasingly comfortable with Terry’s tongue-in-cheek, or maybe simply cheeky, style. 

“Well, thank you for your generous approval.” He smirked to himself as he unexpectedly yet justly mirrored the therapist’s sarcasm.

And as it turned out, Terry understood that kind of interactional flow and jumped that wave instantly, doing that with plenty of a particular kind of grace. 

“Oh, you know, thank you even more for the proper credit!” He laughed cheerfully, perhaps happy at how Jamie was getting to fare better in this verbal table tennis with every line. Jamie quietly laughed back, allowing himself to drop his defenses and relax a little: it seemed that Terry wasn’t taking himself seriously, after all, and was something more than an impudent narcissistic showoff. 

“Very well, the candor’s in, the courtesies exchanged, now you can tell me whatever the business is”, declared Terry in his own idiosyncratic way after their laughter subsided. Then he remembered something: “or wait, first you need to tell me your name. I don’t appreciate this one-sided anonymity, you know. In fact I almost feel threatened by it”.

“Threatened?” Jamie knew very well that they had a lot to discuss and they could run out of time any second now, be it because of Terry’s break ending or Brandon’s coming back from work extra soon. Still, Jamie had somehow got deep into the mood imposed by Terry, and this leg was simply begging to be pulled. “Why should you feel threatened by my anonymity? Should I understand that you have something to hide, or has there been something you wish would stay between you and me?”

“No way, why would you think that?” Terry snorted, and then, putting on a theatrically solemn tone on his voice, he added: “But then again, what can I say, been there, done that… and most importantly, I’m a shrink, them regular folks that come or call here often find me scary for reasons unknown, so it’s always wiser if I play it on the safe side.”

These words caused the two to burst out again, like this curiously random conversation had really been something positively hilarious when in fact, if asked, neither of them could probably tell what on earth they had found so funny. 

Then, as their shared laughter died down, Jamie proceeded to answer Terry’s essential question.

“It’s Jamie, Jamie Marshall.” 

He could almost _hear_ Terry nod over the phone, which was funny, given that he didn’t even know what the guy looked like.

“Alright, Jamie. So, how can I help you?”, responded Terry in a suddenly serious, appropriately professional manner.

Jamie took a deep breath. The time for relax was over. 

And while he had dialed this number with a very specific, business-like attitude to have the matter settled and get clear directions regarding Brandon’s recovery, now he felt strangely reluctant about it. It had been so nice, as it appeared, to simply forget himself and fool around with a guy he didn’t even know but seemingly had some good chemistry with. And now he had to give it up and confront reality, which prospect looked bleak and dull at the same time.

His pitch now changed into somber, muffled notes, Jamie took up the topic: “Well… the thing is… it’s about my partner, Brandon”. Now that the basic introduction part was behind him, Jamie inhaled again and added decisively, in that no-turning-back tone: “I believe he’s a sex addict”.

He got shivers when he heard his own voice say that. It certainly wasn’t the first time he uttered the big taboo words ‘sex addiction’ out loud, but it was the first occasion when he put together these words with Brandon’s name and said that to an outsider, a third party. It was like some kind of spell had been broken: now it wasn’t just a matter the two of them and their tight little world anymore.

“Ouch… I’m sorry”, commented Terry in a light, but audibly compassionate way. “What makes you think so?” 

It might have sounded like Terry was still in the teasing mode, but there was something about the composure in his voice that made Jamie trust him. The joking was presumably over, and now Jamie would finally, hopefully, get to know Terry the therapist.

“Well…” Jamie cleared his throat, and took his time before he began to recount. The lines that were supposed to follow were expectedly difficult to push through his vocal cords, even though he had diligently practiced beforehand what he had to say about the matter. The wave of shame that flowed through his body at the mere thought of recounting the darker side of their relationship made Jamie wonder again if that was the way Brandon felt on a regular basis. 

That shame Jamie felt was so tangled he could hardly tell where exactly it came from: was it about him being unable to get his lover to act differently (‘if he’s _that_ dissatisfied, you must be really bad in bed’), or about him willingly remaining in a relationship that involved this level of humiliation (‘what’s in it for you exactly? Because if he’s doing all this crazy stuff and you’re still sticking around, there must be something seriously wrong with you’), or maybe even about the possibility that him being involved with a sex addict could give the wrong (wrong?) idea about his own sex life and preferences (‘then you must be quite a pervert yourself too, huh?’). 

“There’s quite a few things, but I can’t be sure of all of them, some of them are just my suspicions…but…” His heart rate sped up and Jamie had to exercise most of his willpower not to let it affect his talk. A no-brainer as it may have been, it was a different matter to revolve these things time and again in his head, and quite a different thing to say it out loud to a stranger, behind Brandon’s back. “I mean, he used to watch a lot of porn… I guess… and often he stays in the bathroom way too long, my guess is that he’s masturbating, and lately it’s been happening at least once or twice an evening… and that’s only when we’re together, I mean when we’re both home. So I wonder what could be going on when I’m away…” He swallowed, giving himself a couple of seconds to slow down, in order not to get carried away with his confessions, to remain as methodic as possible and to say only the things that seemed necessary under the circumstances. 

This gave Terry an opportunity to give an encouraging response, a sign that he was listening, tuned in to Jamie’s monologue.

“Uh-huh, go on, please”

“He also… I think he enjoys sex most when it’s rough…or risky… or both.” Jamie shut his mouth for another moment, when the embarrassment of revealing things this private to another party gripped him unexpectedly yet firmly – all in spite of Jamie’s deliberate efforts not to be too forward or unnecessarily blatant with his story. “And this is not the kind of sex I can, or want to, give him, so…I don’t know, I suppose he must be feeling compelled to look for it in different places.” He put the brakes on his own voice again, having detected the confusion spreading inside his head as he spoke, and the tones of self-pity menacingly creeping upon his talk. 

Simply put, he had to pause right there, because there was a danger of him straying away from the disciplined listing of Brandon’s symptoms and plunging into laments over his own relationship failures and grudges.

Terry led him back on track by asking a simple, precise question. “Has he ever hurt himself because of these preferences of his?”

Fortunately, this was something that Jamie could and felt more than competent to answer. “Yes, he definitely has.”

“I see.” The next question was just as simple, but by no means as easy to answer. “From what you say it sounds like you’re in a committed relationship, so does that mean he’s having affairs outside your commitment?”

Jamie could feel a cold sweat break out on his hands and his temples, and a vast dark space opened up before his eyes. It was such an odd experience listening to Terry’s last line. For one part Jamie was perfectly aware it did describe him and Brandon, and that the description fit them perfectly – and for the other, it sounded like something completely irrelevant and absurd, something that had nothing to do with them. 

Commitment? What commitment? Brandon had never said he wanted anything like this; it was all in Jamie’s head, all in Jamie’s silly assumptions that where there wasn’t an explicit ‘no’, then there must have been an understated ‘yes, please’. And so while it had been comfortable for Jamie to assume Brandon wanted exactly the same things as Jamie because he opposed to nothing, when confronted Jamie would have to admit there had been no promises, no declarations, no clarity whatsoever. 

So how could you challenge anyone about having affairs if there had been no straightforward agreement between the two people that affairs were not allowed? What was an affair in such an environment in the first place? The truth behind the thick wall of denial was so brutal it quite literally took Jamie’s breath away. 

Not to mention that Jamie still had no unshakable evidence that Brandon really had sex with other people since he had begun to sleep with Jamie. Perhaps Brandon was actually innocent, at least in this respect, and Jamie was the paranoiac going out of his head for nothing. 

“Well, that depends on how you define commitment…”, Jamie finally replied in a wavering manner. “We haven’t really discussed it…although of course I wish we could make something permanent and strong out of this thing we have…” Again, he felt ashamed, this time upon the realization he was making it sound like it was something he had to explain before Terry, like he should defend the way he and Brandon were before Terry could attack it. 

And in his heart of hearts, Jamie also knew that it wasn’t quite Terry who needed that explanation the most – it was himself. 

As a contrast, Terry sounded as stoic as ever when he commented: “I must say I’m not surprised, this kind of fits the picture”. And before Jamie could even think of, not to mention dare to, asking Terry to elaborate on what exactly he meant by ‘fitting the picture’, the therapist insisted: “So, what about these affairs?”.

“…I don’t know”, Jamie responded genuinely. 

He felt lost at being unable to tell what the truth was – or maybe at a yet another thing: at being unable to tell if whatever he believed to be the truth was anything grounded in the reality or rather simply what he _wanted_ to believe to be true.

And the most humiliating part of all was that Jamie wasn’t even sure what it was that he wanted to believe to be true. Of course he didn’t want Brandon to be going around finding satisfaction somewhere else, but on the other hand, the thought of Brandon having his nasty secret life with all those unfamiliar, unheard-of people brought Jamie that weird, sick kind of excitement he knew he should have been embarrassed about, but wasn’t quite sure if he was.

Fortunately, Terry decided not to pull on that ‘affair’ thread any longer. 

“I see. That’s alright. Whichever it is, this definitely sounds like your guy could use some counseling.” It was such a relief for Jamie to hear that! His perceptions had just been confirmed by another person, and he himself was surprised to discover how wonderful a feeling it was. It wasn’t just a matter of agreement, after all: it was a matter of restoring faith in his own sanity, when after what had already been months of Brandon denying the problem Jamie almost doubted if he wasn’t the one who had it wrong. “I can’t diagnose him over the phone” continued Terry, “I assume you can understand that. But once he comes to have a little chat with me at my office, we’ll all be much wiser.”

This all sounded so optimistic it was too good to be true. Jamie could feel the sweet familiar high of zealousness taking him over.

“Thank you, Terry!”, he exclaimed with sincere enthusiasm. “When do you think he could come to see you?”

“I’ll tell him as soon as he calls me in person about that”, Terry replied casually, as if unaware – and there was no way this sly type would do or say anything unaware; Jamie may only have talked to him for a few minutes, but he already knew better than that – of how putting things like this would affect Jamie.

Was that a joke?

Because if it wasn’t, then Jamie had been right about one thing: it really was too good to be true, which was why now it had just turned out untrue. 

All else aside, there was simply no way to get Brandon to call a therapist and make an appointment personally. If there had been one, Jamie would have found it by now, and would have made Brandon make that call. And that was the bare, hopeless truth.

“Why…” Stupefied, Jamie stammered, broke off, then hung in there until he was able to resume with the most ridiculous question he had already known the answer to anyway: “Why do you need him to call you in person?”

“Because that’s what grown-ups do, and that’s also what therapists do, I mean the responsible ones, which, news flash, I am”, replied Terry in his casual, carefree way which sharply contrasted with Jamie’s suddenly despondent tone. “Grown-ups don’t need for an intermediary to fix their shit. Also, I’m not so sure if you’ve thought of that, but people who don’t come to the office out of their own will tend to make one hell of god-awful patients. To put it clearly, it’s a waste of time for both parties designed to keep a third player happy, which in this case would be you”, he elaborated, making Jamie feel small and humiliated: not just a meddler, but an ineffective, powerless one at that.

He was desperate enough to try his luck again nonetheless.

“I can understand that, I mean I’m aware that what you’re saying makes perfect sense. But… can’t you make an exception, just once? Just give him a try and let me bring him to you?” Determined not to get discouraged by Terry’s dismissive ‘nah’ in the background, he carried on intently with his pledge: “Please try to understand our situation. You can agree that it’s something…special, right? If only you give Brandon this one chance, I’m sure he’ll trust you and let you help him. There’s just this one push, this one concession that he needs, you know?”

Terry’s reaction was as outrageous as ever. Or more than just that. He burst out in arrogant, over-the-top guffaw, before he commented: “Let me make this clear, Jamie. There’s nothing special about you and that Brandon guy, and nothing special about your relationship. Sorry to break this to you, but there are literally zillions of your kind out there, you know who I mean? I mean all those self-centered troubled jerks and their noble saviors making sacrifices nobody asked them for. I’ve seen them around a thousand times or more, and in all fairness I can tell you, this never seems to work the way you wish it would. So yeah, nothing special means no reason for exceptions. Either he gets here on his own or he doesn’t get to be here at all.”

So far Terry had seemed direct in a ways that sometimes felt awkward and sometimes strangely comforting – but Jamie definitely hadn’t seen that level of outward disrespect coming. _Noble saviors making sacrifices nobody asked them for_ , sure. Such a short line and such an efficient way to make Jamie feel exposed, figured out for the impostor he was. Ridiculed. Leveled to the ground. Terry wasn’t just difficult and cheeky, he was also too perceptive for Jamie’s own good.

As Jamie listened on, devastated and too stunned to let out even a tiniest sound, Terry happily went on about with his sermon: “Alright, sorry for being cruel. I’m cool with it, because frankly, I know that no matter how cruel I can get, the shit you’re doing to yourself reaches the levels of cruelty I can’t even dream of topping.”

What was that supposed to be, a consolation or something? Jamie would have scoffed if his chords hadn’t been so tight, and his mind so set on driving the conversation with this outlandish man home, even if right now home didn’t seem like the nicest place out there. 

“…So, does this mean you won’t see Brandon?” He had little hope there was any use making sure of that anymore (and did he even want to send Brandon to this so-called professional who judged him a _self-centered jerk_ without even meeting him?), but being the resolute self he was, after all the effort he had invested into this all, he couldn’t just let it slip without a confirmation. 

Terry, however, remained unwavering. In a way, Jamie envied him that cold-blooded firmness. He wish he, too, had the nerve to say no to people in such a perfectly unemotional, unaffected manner.

“Not until he calls to make the appointment himself, no.”

“I see”, was all that Jamie found himself able to say. He was at a loss for words, so he sincerely had no idea what else could he say, other than perhaps ‘It was a mistake calling here’, which was what he frankly thought, but had no guts to convey.

“Do you?”, Terry demanded a confirmation, relapsing into that joking tone that seemed just so inappropriate and so off-putting to Jamie at the moment.

Truth be told, the thing Jamie felt most like doing was to smash the telephone, or even better, to stuff it down Terry’s throat. Still, perfectly getting into that role of the good, polite, considerate boy he had been brought up to play, he only let out an awkward laughter before he safely summed up: “I’ll try to have him contact you, then”.

“Very well and good luck with that” – Terry wasn’t below resorting to irony to express his skepticism. Jamie didn’t think he cared anymore, the conversation was over to him anyway. 

Apparently, however, it wasn’t to Terry, because he continued after a short and expressive pause: “In the meantime, I think I can recommend you that guy who has years of expertise in the treatment of co-dependence and love addiction, you know, those folks that I’ve just called in less technical terms ‘noble saviors’. I can certify that he has unconventional approach and methods which make his therapies very successful, and besides, he’s simply brilliant. So if you ever feel you have grown to make the decision you could use some therapy yourself, consider calling Terry Ross again”.

To think that there had actually been moments during that conversation when Jamie found Terry’s showiness amusing or charming. Now it seemed like nothing but pure narcissism, which style was annoying beyond words. 

“If that’s what you say… I’ll think of it”, he replied evasively. It was only later that it struck him how very much like Brandon he would become when he felt pressured by someone more dominant and/or interpersonally skilled; how he would end up pretending he needed time for some genuine consideration when in reality he was more than sure of his straight-up decline of the offer.

“I sure hope you will, Jamie”, stressed Terry. “There’s nothing wrong in asking for help, and certainly nothing wrong in taking care of yourself. In fact, it’s the right thing to do, exotic as it may sound to you right now”. A nice touch. It almost seemed like the big-mouthed hypocrite regretted just having spectacularly dumped on him, so he tried to cover the impression by suddenly being all Mr. Sensitive Guy. 

It wasn’t like Jamie couldn’t hear the authentic concern in the therapist’s voice, but he was too hurt and insulted to take it in. Instead, he settled for a handful of polite, conventional thanks-for-taking-your-time and goodbyes before finally hanging up the phone.

At the moment, he was pretty sure he would never give dr. Ross another chance. In fact, he was happy this collaboration wasn’t meant to be, because how could he entrust Brandon’s delicate psyche to someone this judgmental and hurtful? Or at least that was the tale that Jamie had automatically begun to tell himself – he had no training in defending himself in more straightforward ways, so he had to vent his aggression by being silently vengeful.

And even if he had been wrong in his instant assessment of Terry – which he knew he had, because even in the midst of all the stormy emotions and his hurt pride, inside Jamie was well aware that Terry was right about him, about his relationship with Brandon, and it was precisely because they rang true that they were so painful – Jamie still knew his therapy was out of the question. At least for the time being. 

Because…seriously, what a ridiculous idea! 

There was no use getting Jamie a therapy when all the while he could be losing Brandon – any given moment. Anytime.

***

That afternoon when Jamie had talked to Terry Brandon came home later than Jamie expected. Engulfed in his own pessimistic musings and upset about what he had heard from Terry, Jamie didn’t even pay attention to the flow of time. Only upon Brandon’s return did it occur to him that it indeed had got quite late.

Jamie offered Brandon some of the dinner he had made earlier, to which Brandon predictably responded with a “thanks, I’ve had a late lunch at work”. Then Brandon briefly went on about how his day had been, even though it didn’t escape Jamie’s attention that some of Brandon’s initial enthusiasm in his reporting his work life had died down. Apparently the feeling of novelty had gradually worn out, and Brandon definitely belonged to that breed of people who were attracted to anything with multiplied force of gravity as long as that anything was fresh and new.

Afterwards, just for the record, just to make sure that at least he had tried, Jamie mentioned his phone talk with Terry.

“So, I called that therapist Terry Ross, you know, that guy I told you about the other day.”

He said that cautiously, observing Brandon’s reactions like a prey would watch for any signs of an impending attack in a predator. That made a funny comparison, because if anything, it was Jamie who was being the hunter here and Brandon the one in defense – so why was Jamie feeling so vulnerable and insecure in this setting?

Anyhow, Brandon’s reply was scarce and ambiguous. It consisted mostly of a questioning look, perfectly bland and emotionless. According to Brandon, words must have been absolutely redundant here, so he said nothing, but had he chosen to verbally explain his facial expression, he would probably have said something like _I’m not sure what you’re talking about, but I don’t care about it either._

It overpowered Jamie with exasperation, but the really twisted thing was that somehow he realized this unspoken claim to be true. So far, he had learned a little about Brandon’s denial tactics. He was aware that this had been Brandon’s survival style – to repress what he didn’t like for as long as he could, and once he couldn’t ignore the thing or pretend it wasn’t there any longer, to blow up and fence himself away to make sure he couldn’t be touched. In either condition he was not to be reasoned with, locking himself away in those distant places inside himself, behind an invisible wall, out of Jamie’s reach.

Right now, Brandon’s eyes reminded Jamie of a pond with a thick layer of ice underneath what appeared like crystal-clear water – it seemed like you were free to take a dip and swim, but upon an attempt it turned out that it was stone frozen.

Jamie was thus warned against making Brandon remember their previous talk about Terry, or admit to remembering it, in any greater detail. As for himself, he remembered the drama all too well, to the point when even now, after some two weeks had passed, there still wasn’t a day when he wouldn’t think of it. Returning to that matter with Brandon now could be all things, but certainly not anything healthy.

Cracking Brandon’s denial would be futile at best, detrimental to their cause at worst. It was up to Jamie now to find some way around that memory, and find it quick.

“Anyway, he says you can only make an appointment if you contact him personally.” Jamie communicated that in a possibly short, unassuming way. Basically, he was treading on the eggshells again, attempting to strike that virtually unattainable balance between conveying to Brandon what he wanted him to do and yet avoid making him feel attacked.

“Oh”, was all the response that Brandon summoned against the information presented by Jamie. Disarmed, Jamie smiled silently to himself, even though the situation wasn’t funny at all. It was, however, just so typical, so generic of Brandon – and of their interactions concerning Brandon’s getting help, which now had lasted for almost half a year – to severe all the inconvenient communication precisely the way he had done just now. There was no way Brandon was contributing anything to that conversation, not even by stating openly that he didn’t want that conversation, although he did make sure to get that point across in all non-verbal, non-confrontational ways possible; as usual, Jamie had to lay it all out on the table if he wanted to drive that topic home.

It was just like talking to himself, except that even in self-talk Jamie made for a slightly more cooperative and slightly more expressive conversation partner.

Whereas Brandon was simply a passive-aggressive mastermind, no doubt about it. 

As soon as he stopped laughing, greeted by a mildly uninterested yet startled look by Brandon which seemed to say ‘now what?’, Jamie picked up that unfortunate subject which Brandon consistently refused to take up. “Will you?”

It was a short, precise question with a highly predictable answer.

“Sure.” Stressing the line with a tone that said _Conversation’s over_ , Brandon trod toward the fridge to get himself an indispensable homecoming beer. 

In the meantime, Jamie was choking on exasperation, fed up with Brandon and with these crazy-making situations they had repeatedly ended up in these days. 

Again, as always, he had thought he was the one dealing the cards here, but Brandon skillfully outsmarted him. Had he said an outright ‘no, forget it’, or even an evasive ‘maybe’, Jamie would have the basis to go on nagging and persuading him – the results would probably have been nil in any case, but at least he would get Brandon to listen to the voice of reason. 

But now? How could he argue with someone who had essentially said ‘yes’ to his request? That is, he could, but he would have to question Brandon’s honesty and accuse him of lying, which would inevitably mean another fight. A fight in which he would be the bad guy, the one who hurt Brandon with his mistrust and hurtful labeling. There was no way Jamie could afford that outcome.

Seated firmly on the couch, with Brandon’s slender frame leaning against the kitchen doorway in the corner of his eye, Jamie sighed heavily and rested his chin upon his hand. _What happens next?_ , an essential question with no good answer, was ringing inside his head with its poisonous echo.

Was that really the end? Was that how he gave up on Brandon’s mental health, and, by extension, their future?

He was suddenly feeling extremely tired. Too tired to put up any creative denial defenses the way he used to – such as ‘we’ll work something out, I’ll think of something else’, or ‘Brandon is just talking like that, but he knows he needs help just as much as I do’, or, by far the most spectacularly dumb one, ‘maybe Brandon’s alright, nothing much is going on and I’ve been overreacting’ – and yet too tired to get really angry or sad.

He must have exceeded his emotional limit for a single afternoon, he thought. 

With that on his mind, Jamie was about to pull himself together, gather his wits and do something useful for a change. Maybe he could do some research for work he had been planning to do for weeks but somehow wasn’t in the mood, like analyzing the data for a follow-up paper to his clinical study, the results of which he had published last year to a favorable reception by his peers. Or maybe he would start to read a novel from his ‘to read’ stack he basically hadn’t even looked at in months. Or perhaps he could even try to write something himself? His poems weren’t exactly Nobel-prize worthy, but they had always been a great outlet for his sizzling, confused emotions. 

It was actually almost embarrassing to realize out of the blue how little he would read these days for his own sake – like he had forgotten how he loved to read for his own pleasure, for gaining insight, or for self-development. The realization was all the more odd since for the last few months reading had been Jamie’s essential pastime, as usual – only now he would almost exclusively study sources related to sex addiction, child abuse, dysfunctional families, incest, post-traumatic stress disorder… the list could expand almost infinitely, and each item was for Jamie a key to immersion in Brandon’s unspoken world, to merge with it and be exempted from living his own life.

Then over an instant, Jamie was quite abruptly thrown away from his stream of thoughts by noticing, or more like sensing, Brandon sitting beside him on the couch. 

Startled, he carried on observing how Brandon put away the beer bottle on the coffee table to draw himself closer to Jamie and, which frankly occurred to Jamie almost as a shock, putting his arms around Jamie’s waist to pull him closer in a mellow, friendly hug.

Now this turn of events had been so unexpected that instead of rejoicing in this rare display of affection initiated by Brandon, Jamie could only feel distrustful of whatever Brandon was up to now. 

Suspicious, he looked up at Brandon, his body essentially frozen. 

But Brandon didn’t seem to mind. Maybe he didn’t even notice. 

He only looked at Jamie with that soft, kind gaze Jamie couldn’t remember ever having seen in his eyes. That stare seemed to have emerged straight from Jamie’s wildest fantasies, and funnily enough, now that it was really there, Jamie somehow couldn’t believe it. 

It just… it popped out of nowhere, had no context, and it made no sense for Brandon to suddenly go all gentle on him like that. Rather than joy, his tenderness brought Jamie confusion.

It only added up to Jamie’s sense of disarray when Brandon leant closer, just enough to make his shoulder rest against Jamie’s, and murmured lusciously with his mouth right next to Jamie’s ear:

“You look nervous. Did something happen?” 

_Are you serious?_ , was all Jamie could think in response. He even looked attentively at Brandon’s face, that beautifully sculpted, angelic face, in a search for hints that this indeed had been a joke – but no. Brandon retained that calm, sympathetic appearance which indicated how hopelessly out of tune he was with Jamie’s inner world, with Jamie’s goals and interests, and last but not least, with Jamie’s feelings.

Jamie had thought there must have been limits to denial, even to Brandon’s denial, but as it turned out, there were none. 

After all the strife intended to make Brandon go and get help, with all the mess that it had repeatedly created in their life together, with all the time, effort and wracked nerves Jamie had put into planning Brandon’s therapy with straining their relationship being so far the only perceptible result, Brandon was still completely ignorant about any of these, and blind to what it all meant to Jamie.

How ironic it was that now that Brandon for a change was being warm and compassionate, he did it in such a style that instead of comforting Jamie, it only disturbed him more. 

Speechless, Jamie turned his head down and looked away. How was he supposed to react? What was he supposed to say? As angry as he was with Brandon right now, he didn’t feel like he was allowed to reject him. Not now that Brandon was treating him like Jamie’s inner, dream Brandon always would. That would be inconsistent and unfair to Brandon, right? And it also would give him the wrong message that it wasn’t worth it to try, that it was no use being generous and tender towards Jamie, because Jamie was a drama queen who was never satisfied and didn’t know what he wanted.

The point was, however, that Brandon wasn’t really looking for an answer. 

He made it clear in no uncertain terms when Jamie felt his hand slide down his waist and then rest upon his hip, his slender fingers pressing against the soft fabric of the T-shirt covering Jamie’s belly.

Stunned and conflicted, Jamie hurriedly looked up. The untimely and honestly unwelcome hot wave inside his chest and down his groin was met with Brandon’s confident, very much self-assured stare.

Jamie gasped, looked back at Brandon in awe, and then he looked away again, disarmed by the mismatched, disturbing emotions swelling up inside him.

He _loved_ Brandon’s touch, he _loved_ being touched by Brandon, he _needed_ it desperately. So, what was going on? What was wrong? Why did it seem like his body was pleading ‘yes’ and screaming ‘no’ all at the same time?

Struggling to breathe, feeling like he was facing some kind of imminent danger he couldn’t quite identify, Jamie bit his lips hard, trying to contain himself. His muscles went defensively tense, like his body recollected some kind of a threatening memory his mind didn’t store anymore.

He did, however, hear a quiet, yet sharp voice inside his head – a voice of reason, or perhaps just a hunch, a whisper that was calling out to him, trying to tell him in a language he wasn’t so fluent at as of yet: _You can’t have sex with someone you’re so pissed at_. 

He could feel Brandon’s hand move away from his stomach and landing on his own hand instead, greeting it with a warm, reassuring grip, again the kind Brandon had never revealed he even had in his touch repertoire. 

Meanwhile, Brandon’s other hand wandered up to Jamie’s neck, massaging it ably and gently to make Jamie’s stiff arms and chest loosen up.

“It’s okay. Just let me take care of you, alright?” He smiled encouragingly, flirtatiously in fact, his thumb tracing a path down Jamie’s vibrating neck artery. The drum of Jamie’s heartbeat violently paced up its concert; with Brandon in this proximity, Brandon’s spicy perfume and the raw, sensuous scent of his body hit Jamie’s nostrils, making the offer that much more difficult to resist.

But was it really Brandon voicing his care for Jamie? 

Was it really Jamie being nurtured and attuned to the way he had always dreamed he would be someday, somehow? 

Jamie couldn’t be so sure. All his insides and everything about him was strained with disbelief, wrestling with doubt as to why of all times, Brandon had chosen specifically this moment to shower Jamie with his affection, and why of all possible ways to do that, he chose specifically an invitation to get sexual with him.

But eventually, Jamie gave in to all that unforeseen sweetness, effectively silencing all the voices of doubt. The temptation was too strong, the fantasy of feeling special and adored too irresistible. 

There also was the untold, yet very tangible fear that if he rejected Brandon now, Brandon might end up hurt and would have a perfect reason not to engage in any loving advances anymore. And then Jamie would only have himself to blame. Which would be just so typical of him – an inconsistent maniac declining the very thing he had been asking for through and through.

And thus, in no time Jamie had invented explanations for every single one of his doubts, to the point that he immediately forgot he had any. Brandon was offering him sex as a form of consolation, because he hardly knew any other ways to show someone that he cared. And he was a wonderful man, so deeply wounded, and yet giving life his best – he deserved no less than Jamie’s trust and good will. 

As for his ignorance of the reasons for Jamie’s uneasiness, well, he wasn’t exactly a mind-reader, right? It was up to Jamie, after all, to tell him upfront how and why he had been angry with him. And naturally, Jamie hadn’t said a word of that, so how could he expect Brandon to figure out anything on his own? It was Jamie’s sole responsibility to let his feelings be known, and if he hadn’t done that, well, that was his problem alone, and not Brandon’s fault.

These explanations worked really well for the time being. It simply didn’t matter if they contradicted everything Jamie had known, experienced, and sensed to be true.

***  
In the end, what Brandon did that afternoon in fact was taking care of Jamie in a so far unknown role reversal. Right there on that coach he undressed him, caressed him softly, and then masturbated him until Jamie finished. 

And while Brandon’s technique was expectedly remarkable, and the experiences his slim, deft fingers produced amazing, after everything was done, it only made Jamie feel empty on the inside and somehow defective – quite the opposite of what Brandon’s declared goal had been.

It certainly didn’t help that Brandon proved himself not open to reciprocity. He didn’t react at all when Jamie attempted to caress him back, eventually discouraging all such attempts – and as usually under such circumstances, Jamie figured it must have been because he was so inept at bringing sexual pleasure to another person. And then, when Jamie came, Brandon only smiled a self-satisfied smile, reached for the tissues, wiped Jamie and his own hand clean, and gave Jamie a friendly pat on a knee before he got up and left, seating himself in front of the computer.

He left Jamie feeling tangled up inside, quite bad about himself, and strangely, even with all those memories of exquisite pleasure so fresh and still tingling under Jamie’s skin, more alone than before. Brandon’s back, which was most of Brandon that Jamie could see from the couch, seemed to direct a message of _I’ve done my job so that you can’t complain, you should be happy now_. 

In an odd way that Jamie couldn’t really understand or verbalize right now, he felt he had been used.

This feeling wasn’t alleviated in the slightest by what followed, or rather by what didn’t follow. Brandon’s sex drive – one that he showed towards Jamie, if there ever had been such, as Jamie sometimes bitterly thought to himself – had declined quite sharply. 

The evening he had ‘taken care’ of Jamie he wouldn’t even get close to him again, not even by an arm’s length. He was unapproachable, all consumed by surfing fashion websites, which in itself seemed innocent enough, but still. 

Then they went to bed separately. Jamie went first and couldn’t sleep for at least half an hour, fruitlessly waiting for Brandon to join him. 

He eventually did. Jamie’s sleep had been shallow enough to allow him to hear exactly the faint screech of the door, and then to sense the weight of Brandon’s body pressing against the mattress behind Jamie’s back.

A quick, discreet glance at his wristwatch told Jamie it was almost four a.m. by then. This revelation was quite alarming: now that sounded like trouble, and not just for their relationship. Brandon had to get up in some three hours time to get to work, for chrissake! As much as Jamie still clung to the faint yet grandiose hope that Brandon’s staying up late didn’t have to do with what Jamie feared it did, the result was all the same – Brandon would wind up at work inefficient and exhausted.

It wasn’t the first time in these two weeks that Brandon showed an erratic sleep pattern, but certainly it had never been as obvious and as upsetting. 

For a moment or two, Jamie racked his brains over the simple dilemma: should he talk to Brandon about it and do it right now before Brandon could deny this sleepless moment ever happening, or should he pretend he was asleep and just let it be?

Eventually, Jamie’s feelings of personal responsibility for Brandon and accountability for their future together won him over.

“Hey, what’s up? Trouble sleeping?”, he threw in unassumingly, rolling over to his side so as to face Brandon, giving what he considered an almost Oscar-worthy performance of an unsuspecting, perfectly oblivious man caught right in the middle of his good night’s sleep.

Jamie made it his objective to be looking at Brandon with relaxed, sleep-narrowed eyes. Strangely enough, the more anxious and upset on the inside he got, the more attention he paid to maintaining peaceful appearances… well, bluntly put, to pretending to be peaceful, to magic-thinking himself into being peaceful.

Although if Brandon, too, had been playing a role, then as far as credibility was concerned, he was like Marlon Brando to Jamie’s Zac Efron. 

Putting on a convincingly sleepy face, Brandon propped his demonstratively heavy head on his wrist as he responded cautiously “No… not really”. Then he yawned, as if only then did he realize it really had gotten late. “I’ve just been looking at some really great stuff, you know, the fall collections. I guess I’ve lost the track of time”, he explained, and even though his speech was expectedly dazed and heavy, there also was this sense of pure excitement about it, extending right to Brandon’s eyes until they almost seemed to light up this early dawn darkness of their bedroom. 

Jamie couldn’t not believe it, and couldn’t not be charmed by it, try as he might. 

And the fact was, he didn’t even try all that hard. He chose the sedation of endearment. It was that much warmer, that much more pleasant thing to feel, after all.

“You’re really into it, aren’t you?”, he responded with a rhetoric question, smiling at Brandon with a smile of affectionate, amused disbelief. Suddenly, the foreignness was gone, and the unspoken, unforced understanding was back. Truly, it was a silver screen kind of magic.

“Yeah”, Brandon confirmed casually, for a second even flashing that stunning full-teeth smile of his, which planted butterflies and all other kinds of cutesy insects right there in Jamie’s chest. And then, apparently happy with the understanding he had received rather than the perhaps expected scrutiny and suspicion, Brandon went straight ahead to enchanting Jamie even more. “There’s also been some stuff that’d really look great on you, I’m gonna show you later if you’d like”.

Jamie radiated a spontaneous broad smile – and naturally, while it was a significant part of his elation, it wasn’t just about Brandon appreciating him and having Jamie on his mind while he was immersed in his fashion craze, validating and heart-warming as it was. 

The main reason for that sudden rejoicing feeling that came down on Jamie was that he remembered – Brandon helped him remember – how it was like to be comfortable around Brandon, to have that sense of mutual appreciation and unforced, glad generousness. 

“This sounds great, thanks.” 

It wasn’t just that Jamie was glad. The relief he felt was almost over-the-top. There was so much honesty about Brandon as he spoke this time around, so much genuine childlike enthusiasm for that passion of his, that it really reassured Jamie.

The naked truth was Jamie really, sincerely meant to believe Brandon hadn’t spent all night watching porn or sex-chatting, and Brandon’s words effortlessly fed that hope.

Now that Brandon finally acted like the person Jamie thought he knew, Jamie could also address him like the person he knew, with genuine care and nurturing concern, no allegations, no tiptoeing, no second-guessing.

“But now just sleep, okay? You’re going to be dead in the morning”, Jamie added with a smile as he stroked Brandon’s hair and playfully pressed his head to push it closer to the pillow. And then he also tucked him in with the blanket; Brandon was so skinny and frail he looked cold even on these hot summer nights. 

Brandon agreed wholesomely, and then they exchanged their goodnights, all tucked up, cozy and secure.

It didn’t cost Brandon much to make Jamie forget the anxiety and misery he had inflicted upon him – it never had. At least on that night the rule still applied, and Jamie somehow miraculously repressed those emotions he had been put through the day before, first by Terry and then by Brandon himself. 

If it had seemed optimistic at first, it really was. The mood for the next couple of days was alright, the space between Jamie and Brandon having become more peaceful and relaxed. The trust, however, wasn’t completely there. Jamie could sense they were never quite at ease with each other, never quite ready to let down their guard and expose themselves genuinely as they were.

Or maybe those were just his perceptions? Maybe it was just him, after all. Maybe everything was normal and fine, and he was just being his typical, oversensitive, overreacting self.

Except that it really wasn’t all that normal and fine, as Jamie was soon to find out. From the next day on, Brandon would slowly yet steadily become more and more elusive, spending more and more time by himself – well, upon Jamie’s request at least he did show Jamie those shirts from the new season’s collections he had thought would look good on Jamie, which meant that he hadn’t lied about that… probably… – and keeping more and more to himself. 

He actually permanently stopped going to bed at the same time as Jamie, and he consistently refused Jamie’s offers to come and have their usual bath before bedtime. His explanations were always reasonable, such as “I’m okay, I took a shower after work” (which was obviously true, except it might have not, as Jamie could never be sure what Brandon really was up to while taking those ‘showers’) or “I’ve still got some work to do, I’m gonna take long, go ahead and don’t mind me” – but somehow, it always felt like there was something amiss. And the more it would happen, the stronger Jamie’s impression he was being dumped would get.

No bath ritual and not going to bed together meant no occasions to get intimate, which led to a snap in their sex life. And that snap had gradually pushed Jamie into second-guessing, going crazy with the confusion. 

He couldn’t tell what the truth was. Whenever he did approach Brandon, Brandon was always being very kind to him, smiling and relaxed like he wanted to answer to Jamie’s unspoken doubts with a ‘see? I still like you, we’re still alright, there’s no reason for you to worry’. And Jamie was a master at holding on to the good memories and believing them over everything that pointed to the contrary. He still wanted to have faith in his faith that Brandon cared, that he wasn’t avoiding him on purpose, and wasn’t deceiving him behind his back.

Paradoxically, a few weeks before Jamie had been much more alert, much more active in seeking symptoms of Brandon’s relapsing into the addiction or other psychological problems – in fact, he had been resembling a detective on his way to solve a mystery. His attitude shifted entirely when after his phone call to Terry it had become clear it wasn’t possible at the moment to bring Brandon to therapy. 

Jamie didn’t mind Brandon’s relapse all that much as long as there was a prognosis of healing – he actually almost welcomed the relapse to expose Brandon’s problems, define them and allow them to fix them. But now… now there was no prospect of Brandon getting help, so all Jamie could hope for was that things weren’t as bad as they seemed. 

Closing his eyes on the elephant in the room was basically all that Jamie had left to do if he wanted to keep their relationship going.

After a couple of days of all that understated ditching and dodging, Jamie decided he would try to break out of the mutual subterfuge. He made up his mind to relentlessly ask Brandon to have a bath with him. 

He was determined not to let Brandon cast him aside anymore with the same old playing for time tactics. When Brandon predictably said it would still take long until he was finished, Jamie stressed he didn’t mind and that he would wait for Brandon as long as it took. Brandon protested quietly that there was no use waiting around for him when he really didn’t know when he would finish his ‘work’, but Jamie remained tenacious, undisturbed even by that skeptical and mildly unfavorable look by Brandon that seemed to say ‘very well, as you wish, you loser’.

So Jamie stayed right there on the sofa, engaging in some of his own work research – at least waiting for Brandon he could do some extra amount of studying for that evening, which was definitely a worthy up side of this situation – and minutes trudged on and on, joining one another in the packs of twos, fives, eventually dozens. 

A strange game was on now. With each breath, each second actually, Jamie was becoming more and more painfully aware that Brandon was deliberately putting him on hold, waiting for him to give up, and doing it in such a sly way that Jamie couldn’t blame him for the rejection – it would have been Jamie who had given up after all, wouldn’t it? 

When an hour struck since Jamie had begun his waiting on Brandon, the humiliation swelling up his throat let Jamie know in no uncertain terms he couldn’t ignore the way things were anymore, burying his head in the sand as Brandon carried on silently, deliberately putting him down.

Shy and self-consciously apologetic, like he was convinced he was asking too much or something he did not deserve, Jamie approached Brandon and his wretched laptop with a timid “Can we go now?”.

Brandon offered him no more than a quick, slightly bored glance. “I’m not done yet”, he insisted matter-of-factly.

Jamie bit his lips and then he smiled awkwardly, nervously running his fingers through his hair. “I can see _that_ ”, he responded matter-of-factly, sticking his stare into the floor so that he wouldn’t have to face Brandon’s blatant indifference. “I’ve been thinking… maybe you just could, you know… consider… taking a break… please?”, he stuttered, finishing with that downright degrading pleading accent.

It was getting all the more degrading as Brandon remained completely unmoved by Jamie’s miserable begging. “No. I want to get this done today”, he replied curtly, instilling in Jamie an admittedly childish urge to lean towards him and look over his shoulder to verify if it really was any kind of _work_ that Brandon had been keeping himself so busy with.

In that second Jamie had reached his breaking point, the moment he decided he should back out of this absurd game that had come worryingly natural to the two of them. There was simply no use playing it safe anymore and hiding how vulnerable he was in this situation, no use pretending that he was just casually dropping a non-charged offer, all the while guilelessly believing in the diligent after-hours working as the reason for Brandon’s persistent rejection. 

It was a painful second of revelation for Jamie, a second to swallow his pride along with denial. The pain was very real, very physical, like he had an actual lump in his throat. He had realized that the only chance he had now at getting Brandon to bathe with him was to uncover his cards, to discard the casual façade and let Brandon know how he really cared about making that bath happen. 

And while that was the only solution Jamie could think of, at the same time it made the stakes higher. It didn’t hurt so bad if Brandon didn’t go along with something that Jamie feigned to be easygoing about – but if Jamie exposed himself, if he showed how much he really cared and how much he wanted this, Brandon’s rejection would smash him. In that case, he wouldn’t be able to go on telling himself that Brandon’s refusal was something accidental and meaningless. 

In short, if Jamie trusted Brandon with his genuine feelings and Brandon would still say no, there would be no escaping the truth that Brandon couldn’t care less about Jamie’s needs and Jamie’s longing for him. And for Jamie, it was unbearable even to try to imagine it. 

After what could have been another couple of minutes of awkward, tense silence, Jamie closed his eyes, feeling like he was about to jump into a bottomless chasm. It was somehow easier this way, with his eyes closed; it was easier not to look at this cold, detached man who again seemed a total stranger, and not to mistake this man with his precious Brandon, the person Jamie did his best to love and care for.

“I understand…”, he began bravely, and paused almost as soon as he opened his mouth. The confusion inside his head prevented him from knowing what exactly to say next. “I mean, I know… you’ve got work to do, and you really want to give it your best shot. I mean, it’s great how engaged and hardworking you are, it’s amazing how much you’ve been giving into this job.” He faltered with every second word, internally wincing at how even he himself didn’t believe that this was the case but still ended up saying it anyway, just for the sake of telling Brandon something nice. “But…” He inhaled and clenched his fists, like he was preparing for landing a blow rather than asking someone that mattered a lot to him to be slightly more generous. “But, the point is…I really miss this. You know? Our baths, our time together, your warmth, your touch… I miss us.”

He heated up with every word, always getting the sense he should say more, in a more powerful way, sound more convincing, seem more compelling – and with every word, he waited in vain for Brandon’s reaction, until he reached what sounded in his own ears like the peak of sappy sentimentality. 

There he stood, with his head hanged low in humiliation, distasted and ashamed at how he emotionally bared himself before Brandon completely only to realize he had overdone it and all these private things would have been better left unsaid.

Then, after what seemed like an eternity, in the corner of his eye Jamie saw Brandon shrug his shoulders and close his laptop, as he dropped a nonchalant “Alright then”. Just like that.

He stood up and moved past Jamie into the bathroom, and even though this should have meant that Jamie’s sincerity card had worked, this time around Jamie knew better than to explode with joy. 

And, the disturbing truth was that he was right. While on the surface Brandon had yielded to his request, he also had launched his finest passive-aggressive arsenal to make Jamie wish he hadn’t been the pest and had just left him alone instead. 

All the time they spend in the bathroom, first preparing for the bath and then in the water, Brandon stayed quiet and unapproachable. He was admirably consistent in remaining this way. And it wasn’t even that he was angry, or callous, or unkind in any clear, unambiguous manner.  
He simply was… so elusive, avoidant of eye contact, shunning away from the closeness without explicitly forbidding it, that his victory over Jamie was complete. Now, Jamie didn’t have the guts to ask for or insist on something Brandon seemed so reluctant about and would most likely refuse, or agree only to demonstrate how much he did not enjoy it – but on the other hand, if Jamie didn’t even ask, he could only blame himself for not even trying, and not Brandon for, well, what actually? Not reading his mind? 

At the moment Jamie couldn’t even define the exact reasons why Brandon made him feel the way he did, and this pained him even more, as he couldn’t say if it really was about Brandon and the way Brandon acted (or didn’t act), or if there was something wrong with him. 

Which might have been precisely Brandon’s intention.

The doubt. Masking the truth. Covering up the traces. Crazy-making. Brandon was a master of all that. There was no defying him.

It was so unwise to make him your opponent. 

And it was just as ill-considered to let yourself be dragged into those little, subtle games of his, with rules that he had made up and prizes and penalties that he handed at his whim.

Unfortunately, Jamie had just done both.

Those were about the longest fifteen minutes Jamie had ever spent in bathroom. 

Fifteen minutes of tense, awkward silence, fifteen minutes of forced calm and pretended control while they sat on the opposite sides of the tube, either washing only himself, either making the point not to even as much as brush the other one, not to mention deliberately touch him. 

Fifteen minutes of an awareness that with all this, Brandon seemed so strangely and genuinely at ease, like he actually didn’t mind what – and how – was going on. This hurt so much, and felt so graceless, so demeaning, that Jamie feared he would choke on the bathroom steam.

And yes, probably much to Brandon’s satisfaction, it taught Jamie his lesson. From that evening on, he wouldn’t ask for their bath time together anymore.

No bath time obviously meant no bed time, and no bed time meant no sex, although at this point it didn’t even matter as much. Jamie realized now that their problems had reached a stage when poor or no sex life was but a minor disturbance.

***

Hard times were approaching. Jamie had to face that once he became aware of the rupture in their sex life. 

Ashamed of these thoughts as he was, he was soon to realize that to him, after all, sexual intimacy was an essential part of a relationship, of being together. 

He didn’t like to think of himself as the kind of man who put sex first. The fact was that he really was far from it. His relationship with Brandon had still been okay while they were celibate. 

The point was, however, that once they had attempted to be intimate again only to have Brandon back out of it after a while, this felt so much more like a rejection than the previous time, multifold as hurtful and as powerful. 

Losing their sex, then, meant to Jamie much more than he initially would have been inclined to admit.

Because after all, what kind of relationship that was if you didn’t want your partner physically and spiritually? What kind of commitment it was if sharing your partner’s most private moments and spaces wasn’t the sweetest of your fantasies? What kind of intimacy it was if getting to know your partner through and through and learning him inside out like nobody else could wasn’t your ultimate goal? 

To Jamie, sex was the perfect expression of all these things. And it really saddened him, not to mention humiliated, to know that people he put his love and trust saw things differently. Like most people probably did anyway. First Jessie, and now Brandon… to them, sex was about technique and skills, about fun, about fantasy, about being cool, not about vulnerable exposing yourself and being appreciated for who you were. No matter how much Jessie would deny it, Jamie knew better – he still was sure Jessie had left him in large part because Jamie wasn’t good enough in bed for him. This explained why Jamie ended up replaced by a younger, more attractive, more spontaneous, more virile Mexican-American version of himself. 

And now the same thing was happening all over again with Brandon. Brandon had tried sex with Jamie, he had even brought forward some ideas, such as Jamie being the top, that would help Jamie fit into his own idea of a sex life; then he would gradually find out that this wasn’t working and it really wasn’t worth his time, so he gave up and went to look for what he wanted in different places.

Rationally, Jamie was aware that Brandon wasn’t an addict for no reason, and if he indeed had relapsed – the dreaded concept that Jamie slowly had to begin to face – then it can’t have been all about Jamie. Still, the logical didn’t always mean the most convincing, and Jamie couldn’t shake of the feeling that Brandon’s relapse was somehow his failure, as well as something that should totally have been expected. 

Because if only he had been a better, more passionate, more imaginative lover, if only he had known how to please Brandon, if only he hadn’t been himself…

Thinking such thoughts, which would pop up out of the blue and distract Jamie from any given activity he was currently trying to engage in, regularly made Jamie loathe himself for being so inept and undesirable, and all at the same time, also loathe Brandon for being so callous and shallow, for not giving a damn about anything but cheap physical excitement, for not even giving Jamie a chance to improve by telling him up front what it was he didn’t like about Jamie’s sex, or found boring, or whatever.

Long and difficult days had thus befallen Jamie, days and nights during which he would take turns either swamping himself with work and keeping busy with all sorts of things to do only not to think about that cold, distant guy lurking around in his apartment, or frantically carrying on with his research on sex addiction and all the related topics like he still believed anything he could read in those books and on those websites had the potential to contain just one miraculous revelation, just a single piece of information that would change it all, providing the key to Brandon’s recovery – and their happy life together.

Those days, Jamie and Brandon hardly ever talked. Jamie had decided to leave Brandon alone, figuring that if Brandon wanted his company, he would reach out for it himself. This decision was to confirm Jamie’s most nightmarish and yet most sound expectations: when unprompted, Brandon displayed no interest in maintaining his bond with Jamie. While Jamie was at home, Brandon could literally do with silently staring at his laptop monitor all day long.

It devastated Jamie to see how little Brandon needed from him and how little he had to say to him once sex was out of the picture. 

Then there was also that stinging, lonely realization that there was no communication between them, no connection and no closeness unless Jamie was the one to initiate it. Brandon could take it or leave it – leaving it being the preferred option, apparently. Did that invalidate their relationship up to that point as a whole? Did that mean that whatever affection and endearment Jamie had thought Brandon was feeling for him was only Jamie’s senseless illusion, supported by his own need to feel appreciated and needed by the man he had offered his all to?

The rupture had happened gradually, almost unnoticeably, on a day-to-day basis. And yet, looking back, it was almost shocking to realize how long a way down they had come since their June days of euphoric reunion, and how little seemed to keep them together right now.

That was when loneliness began to hit Jamie with its relentless, unforgiving whip, more than it had ever done before since Brandon came to live with him. Jamie presumed that this time it was worse because on all earlier occasions, even when he did feel alone, he was also determined and hopeful. Whereas now not only was he alone, but also discouraged and faithless.

He missed his friends. He missed all those precious relationships that he had childishly neglected over the last few years, not in the least because of his petty disappointment that they weren’t mind-readers and didn’t miraculously just happen to know the perfect words and gestures that would console him after his breakup with Jessie. 

Oh, and other than that, he had obviously been jealous – and as obviously unable to admit it at the time – of their harmonious, normal lives with regular relationships accompanied by regular emotions as opposed to dysfunction and drama all over the place. Jamie had used to disguise this envy even before himself as fierce despise of what he had thought of as bland, uninspired, and plain pointless existence. 

The only good – if bittersweet – news about this sudden loneliness attack was that apparently Jamie had finally grown up if he was able to see the error of his ways, wondering if it was a ‘better late than never’ case. 

Of course, once he had met Brandon and all of their sometimes lovely, sometimes scary craziness ensued, he went on separating himself from his potential support networks even more, reducing his relationships with people around him to empty formalities or plain nothing. Because why talk to someone who wouldn’t understand anyway – the whole world, to be precise? Why even bother keeping up appearances? 

And so Jamie was paying now for his pride, for his inferiority complex masked as feelings of superiority, with a bottomless sense of isolation. He caught himself wishing he had someone to talk to, as simple as that. And then he would beat himself up with guilt and self-loathing, both brimming from the fear that he had been the one to blow all his chances for a friendly soul, for a shoulder to lean on. And even more importantly: that he didn’t deserve one.

By extension of missing his friends, Jamie also faced the very much unwelcome fact that he really did miss Jessie, and, worse still, he even missed Javier, that silly Latino boy toy of his.

Javier – or Javi, as most called him with endearment and which Jamie followed with less endearment and more mockery – might have been irritating with his genuinely childish mannerisms and behaviors which Jamie tended to call ‘guilelessness’ on his better days and ‘stupidity’ the rest of the time. He was essentially that cute, hyperactive, teenage-boy sized, teenage-boyishly acting sexpot who got away with being the male version of dumb blonde stereotype because he was, well, stereotypically attractive, and attractive people could get away with more.

Alright, so Jamie was still mad with envy when it came to Javier, which was why he had a hard time appreciating his good sides, coupled with an extreme ease of downplaying those he did see, attributing them to Javi’s exotic good looks and convenient dumbness ( _nobody takes him seriously, so nobody can feel threatened by him_ ). Truth be told, a number of unpleasant situations had happened between himself, Javier and Jessie precisely because of that: Jamie felt so hurt by how Jessie had chosen Javi over him, all his tender spots of self-doubt hit with such robotic precision, and at the same time so justified in his quiet rage at how things had turned out for the three of them, that he couldn’t even care to make an effort to hide his snub disdain of Javi, not even enough to keep up his usual nicest guy ever persona. 

The conviction that Javi in fact was less than him, only in this sick world of appearance and ignorance worship it went on unnoticed (by Jessie in particular), had somehow made Jamie feel stronger and filled him with bleak satisfaction.

But in his heart of hearts, even Jamie knew that these views were mistaken, dictated by cheap spite rather than rational outlook on things. Javi was popular and universally loved not because of his looks and not because of his harmless goofy demeanor, but because he was a genuinely kind, fun, warm-hearted person with a set of some really decent interpersonal skills. That was precisely what Jessie had fallen for, more than anything else. And perhaps that also was what Jamie was envious of, more than anything else.

Because looks were something you either had or didn’t, and it wasn’t much of an achievement if it so happened that you did have them. 

And likewise, it wasn’t exactly something to be proud of if people approved of you because they considered you too immature to treat you seriously (whilst, needless to say, Jamie thought himself to be the complete opposite – as he liked to tell himself in the darkest corners of his mind, the actual reason why he didn’t get along with most people was that they felt threatened by how sensitive, perceptive and original he was, and of course their distance toward him had little if anything to do with his secrecy, self-consciousness, and the arrogant aura he sometimes exuded which involuntarily revealed that underneath all the displayed empathy and generosity he liked to look down on other people to make himself seem special). 

But… but getting people to like you, to enjoy your company just because of who you were, just as you were, no act, no effort and no pretense – that was a matter of personality, which was something entirely up to you. Unlike your physical appearance, personality was a matter of your choice: you could choose to be someone appreciated and valued by others, or you could stick to your self-pity, changing nothing for no one’s sake and half-demurely, half-defiantly wait for someone to come along and _accept you just as you were_. Which obviously never happened, at least not for Jamie. 

A stifled yet hurtful voice within told him that he expected too much and pushed his closest ones too hard into proving they _really saw_ him and _really accepted_ him, which inadvertently yet predictably left them feeling misunderstood, never compassionate or ‘there’ enough no matter how hard they tried, and him feeling dismissed and alone. 

Yes, if he wanted to live happily among people who cared for him, it was his responsibility to change, apparently, to become more like them: fewer insecurities, less second-guessing, less oversensitivity to real and imagined slights, more of relax and going with the flow. Being himself, being the current version of himself, clearly wasn’t enough. 

Thus, Jamie knew what he had to do, what he would have to become like if he wanted to break out of his isolation and claim those coveted social assets that Javier had. Still, to know didn’t necessarily mean to act. The problem was, again, that one voice inside Jamie’s head, one that kept hissing how unfair it was to expect that Jamie should be the one to change; that in reality he wasn’t doing or being anything so wrong or outrageous, it wasn’t his fault, just the world that didn’t and wouldn’t understand him.

The world, however, did and would understand the likes of Javi. Whatever it was exactly, then, that made Javi so much easier to love and appreciate than Jamie, Jamie knew that this much was true: Javi was simply that nice, authentic, exuberant guy, no drama, no getting lost in the fantasy, no intoxication on his own stormy emotions. He was easier to be around and easier to be with. 

For these three and a half years since Jessie left him, Jamie had secretly been hoping that Javi did have some blind spots, some unacceptable flaws that would surface sooner or later and make Jessie realize this relationship had been a wrong choice all along. Alas (for Jamie), nothing like that happened and it was rather safe to assume it wouldn’t happen in the future, either. 

If anything, their relationship had been going on stronger since they had to fight for staying together under hostile circumstances, most importantly on the part of Javi’s homophobic brother, but also from Jessie’s widowed father, Paul, who was really fond of Jamie and had been the only person that would speak out loud the precious words Jamie longed to hear so much: that Jessie was deaf, blind and intellectually challenged for trading Jamie for this undereducated, half-baked showoff cholo. Jessie and Javi, however, had overcome it all, so it seemed it hadn’t been a rushed mistake on Jessie’s part after all. Jessie had known what he was doing, and who he was trying to be with – a straightforward, sincere boy who loved him and adored him in a straightforward, genuine way which Jamie, it seemed, could never afford.

Because how could he afford that? He only knew how to push people away if they got too close. He certainly didn’t mean it, it was the last thing he thought he wanted, but the story of his life had shown that somehow, he always ended up doing just that. 

So right now Jamie was offering his pretty much not straightforward love to someone who had a hard time reciprocating, if to reciprocate was his intention at all, to begin with. It seemed like Jamie’s subconscious was doing it on purpose: he had sought out someone as unavailable as Brandon so that he could devote himself completely to the chase after him. By doing so, he could always comfort himself that even if Brandon couldn’t love him, he couldn’t love anyone else, too. 

Convoluted and crazy as it might have seemed, that way was much more bearable than risking one more rejection from someone like Jessie, someone open-hearted, ready to love and be loved, and witnessing that someone choose another man over him. 

Then again, this meant that Jamie in a way preferred – found it easier to tolerate – to lose Brandon to addiction rather than a living person made of flesh and blood. Really, how sick was that? It only made Jamie shake his head in disbelief.

On brief moments of clarity like these, Jamie would come to a conclusion that after all, he was a great match for Brandon, being those aberrant weirdoes that they were. His life had taken a proper course, then. He had left healthy and sound people such as Jessie for healthy and sound people such as Javi, and finally mingled with his own kind.

His troubled musings about Jessie and Javi – the new JJs, as their social circle would jokingly call them, disregarding how painful it was for the abandoned half of ‘the old JJs’… it was like Jamie had been just a meaningless letter in Jessie’s life to be disposed of and substituted with another – hadn’t come accidentally at this time of the year, nor was Jamie’s growingly agonizing solitude the only reason for them resurfacing. 

He would have been able to tell that time was coming even without looking at the calendar. The scorching warmth of mid-summer sun, the skies painted fresh uncompromising blue, the air filled with heavy steaminess that to Jamie would always carry the scent of desire – all these had been the annual indicators that August 21 was approaching.

August 21 was Jessie’s birthday. And this year he was turning thirty, so it wasn’t just any birthday. Although Jamie perhaps wasn’t the one to talk about the uniqueness or life-changing qualities of turning thirty – at his own deliberate insistence, five months earlier his own thirtieth birthday had passed like any other day. (Well, life had its own peculiar ways handing you its birthday presents anyway; within slightly more than a week since that very much undercelebrated day Jamie met Brandon and everything had indeed changed.)

It was… it would be an important day. Not just for Jessie – it meant a lot to Jamie, too. After all had been said and done, once salt had started to evaporate from the wounds so that they could begin to heal, Jamie was finally able to look at Jessie’s role in his life more objectively and appreciate it for what it had been, or possibly still was. 

The man he had truly loved and in a way went on loving; the man he had seen grow and blossom from a perky teen into masculinity incarnated, so powerful and mature; the man who had been Jamie’s inspiration over the years, who had taught him so much about life, relationships and finally about his own self; this unique, one of the kind man was now about to turn thirty. He was about to begin a new chapter in his adult life, to grow even more and to reach even further on the beautiful path of his life. How could that mean nothing to Jamie?

Actually, for quite some time Jamie had fooled himself it could and really did mean nothing. And maybe it would have stayed that way if Brandon had been keeping Jamie occupied these days in slightly more pleasurable ways. When willingly absorbed by Brandon, Jamie had no reason to think about Jessie, Javi and their charming little world of love, joy and satisfaction in which Jamie felt so alien; now, however, staying absorbed by Brandon only brought Jamie to the edge of sanity, and it was in his self-interest to find himself something else to put his mind to. 

He remembered April now, and how he had rejected an invitation to Javi’s birthday party following Brandon’s advice from that memorable heart-to-heart they had that evening about Jamie’s relationship with Jessie. For the years since their breakup, Jamie had always been invited to Javi’s birthday, and he would always reluctantly accept, feeling self-consciously unwelcome and not belonging there as he may have done. This year had been the first time he declined, acting upon his genuine feelings. 

Brandon’s support and encouragement had, obviously, played a large part in Jamie’s finding the courage to say no to the JJs – but only now did Jamie understand that Brandon’s role in his decision had been something even more essential, even more organic.

It was clear now that Jamie wouldn’t have had it in him to refuse the invitation without Brandon in his life. The JJs had been an appreciated if sometimes difficult addition to Jamie’s existence – at the very least they would give him a place to be and a soul to turn to whenever he was depressed and alone. But once Brandon had appeared, and Jamie’s wishes and hopes of attaining his fantasy life had been rekindled, he didn’t need that anymore. If he was depressed, he could handle it as long as it was for Brandon’s sake, and if he was lonely, he would just clench his teeth and tell himself to hold on until things between him and Brandon worked out, which he firmly believed they would, until very recently.

In short, Jamie had distanced himself from JJs, because now he had his dream guy and didn’t need them anymore; and now that the dream guy had gradually been turning more and more into a nightmare, Jamie suddenly remembered that he still had some friends here and there, too, and maybe he could use their company.

Jamie became aware of all that just now, and was appalled by himself.

He hadn’t heard from the JJs ever since that April, and frankly, he wouldn’t be surprised if he never would again. That probably wouldn’t happen, especially given Javi’s good-natured, slightly amnesiac ease with which he would forgive all sorts of slights and damage, but Jamie knew he didn’t deserve it.

He was such a lame excuse for a friend, hovering around people only if he needed them, forgetting them in an instant whenever a more exciting fantasy had captured his attention, and then returning, expecting kindness and openness, as soon as the fantasy had worn off or let him down.

So, there had been silence between Jamie and the JJs for many months now. As Jessie’s birthday approached, Jamie fought his anxieties and attempted to swallow his pride while preparing to make the birthday telephone call. 

He even had bought Jessie a present the other day on his way back from work. It was a beautiful and stylish handcrafted photo album with auburn-colored leather cover; a fitting, if a little commonplace, gift for a photographer. Frankly, it was quite expensive too, and Jamie was actually aware of this gut drive within himself, an attempt to compensate to his friends for being unavailable and rejecting by lavishing them with material spoils. At the same time, Jamie was sure that the implicit price tag not only would not impress Jessie, but could actually anger him as a manipulative trick to get him to forgive and forget something he still felt sore about. 

Jessie was that kind of man, after all. He was really good at instinctively figuring people out when they were being deceitful or insincere. It certainly was no wonder that he had seen through Jamie. It should have been expected that their relationship wouldn’t stand the test of time. 

Thus, rather than being conceived as a strategy of reconciliation, Jamie’s generosity was supposed to serve Jamie himself, and make him feel better about himself.

Plus, in all likelihood, this gift really was the best Jamie could muster up at the moment – an album may have been impersonal, but safe enough to be certain that under no circumstances would it miss the mark with Jessie. This reflected precisely the present state of their relationship: they had been too distant for too long for Jamie to know exactly what was on Jessie’s current wishlist, so he had to settle for something that would presumably not end up on Jessie’s to-discard-list, and to resort to his knowledge of Jessie’s taste and sense of aesthetics in choosing the particular model. At least these he knew to a satisfying degree. Besides, his and Jessie’s appreciation of visual treats had usually been on the same wavelength… and these things didn’t change as fast as some other traits in people, did they?

So Jamie had his present, which he had stored safely at the rear of his top bookshelf, the very place where he would keep the stash of books on sex addiction and sexual abuse neatly covered behind the innocently boring fence of multi-volume handbooks of veterinary medicine. Curiously enough, for no particular (or at least readily understandable) reason, Jamie felt the need to hide Jessie’s present from Brandon just as much as that psychological stuff that Brandon dreaded so much.

Other than the present, Jamie also had his words of birthday wishes prepared, having scrupulously (not to say: obsessively) planned out exactly what to say and what not to say to Jessie. These rehearsals inside his mind made him feel a little more confident about calling Jessie on his birthday, even though he knew both himself and Jessie too well to believe the call would turn out perfectly the way he had designed. 

For starters, Jamie was the type that easily succumbed to tension, and he would make it instantly clear with stammering, wavering, forgetting or giving up on what he had to say under the pressure of uncertainty. 

And then there was the matter of how Jessie would take the telephone from Jamie, if he answered it at all. … No, he definitely would answer. It was Jessie, after all. He wasn’t a coward; unlike certain people he had used to be quite close to, he didn’t have to hide behind passive-aggressive tactics such as ‘happening not to be able to answer the phone’ at the most convenient moment.

Perhaps it was rather that a part of Jamie secretly wished Jessie wouldn’t answer. Jessie’s straightforward, not-beating-around-the-bush attitude was something Jamie was afraid of, as if Jessie with his uncompromising perceptivity could expose him, see him through for the calculating impostor that he was. 

He was fearful of what Jessie would have to say to him after all this time, how he would react to Jamie acting so friendly and cordially all of a sudden.

One thing was certain. He hadn’t heard from the JJs yet, even though they must have planned to throw some kind of a party to commemorate Jessie’s huge anniversary – they both were the kind of people that wouldn’t ever miss an occasion to celebrate and play. The message was clear then: whatever they were up to, Jamie wasn’t welcome to join in.

It wasn’t like Jamie would be all that excited to participate, either, especially being unable to bring Brandon along (it was a no-brainer that Brandon wouldn’t fancy the idea of meeting Jamie’s friends). Not that it mattered all that much. The point was about maintaining appearances, or a lack of thereof, on the JJs part. If they still included Jamie to the circle of their closest ones, if they still considered Jamie one of the pack, they would have invited him over regardless of Jamie’s likely (what else would they expect of him?) refusal.

But they hadn’t.

The message was they were better off without him, and Jamie reaching out to them now of all times, like he _expected_ them to make up and invite him just because he called them upon a whim, would certainly be perceived as bothersome and uncalled for.

Spinning the web of his own poisonous thoughts like that, not for a second failing to convince himself that he was undeserving and unworthy of the JJs’ friendship and destined to be unsuccessful in his attempt to get back into their lives, on August 21 Jamie nevertheless reached for his telephone and resolutely dialed Jessie’s number.

He deliberately used his lunch break at work as the time to do that – for a number of reasons, but most importantly because it might have been the case that in the evening there would be a party or some other form of celebration going on, and Jamie wanted nothing less than to have Jessie answer his call with all those noises of cheer, good time and social fulfillment in the background, a soundtrack of joy Jamie had no access to and, largely at his own wish, was allowed to be no part of. 

So, Jamie did dial Jessie’s number with determined, strangely swift movements of his fingers, in spite of the suspenseful tightness pulsating in his chest. It was as if Jamie had split into two different entities while trying to make that call, his body having an agenda and a will of its own, separate of his emotions, robotically moving ahead to accomplish the task. It was an odd, but familiar sensation, and Jamie had actually come to appreciate it as a useful coping strategy during charged moments such as this.

There was also another valid reason why it was convenient to call Jessie during the lunch break. With this, Jamie had a highly limited time window at his disposal, and it made it easier for him to focus on the task, to get over it before time was up, as opposed to pondering, fumbling, fretting until he eventually gave up on calling Jessie at all.

For those brief couple of moments it took to close the door of his office not to be disturbed, take the phone in his hand and select the appropriate entry in the address book, there was a combat going on inside Jamie’s head: a veritable clash of yearning for Jessie to pick up and tell Jamie in that warm, easygoing baritone of his that everything was alright, that he was happy to hear from Jamie and that Jamie had been missed, versus a silent prayer for Jessie not to answer the goddamn phone at all.

It would be such a relief, such a comfort if Jessie decided not to pick up the phone, just like the call never happened, thought Jamie in an attempt to get himself through the waiting signals, each lasting maybe two seconds, but feeling like an hour. Being ignored would be an ultimate form of rejection, but right now it seemed an easier way for Jamie to handle, something more comfortable to a degree. At least then he wouldn’t have to face Jessie’s reactions or his own emotions induced by confronting him.

Typically of himself, Jamie had got so engulfed in his own musings to such an extent that he was positively startled upon the crisp, lilting tone he suddenly heard right in his ear.

“Hello?”

Jamie’s heart was now pumping faster, as if it had remembered all the stakes and the risk, and how now there was no turning back, although there were too many reasons why this might not work out. 

He felt a lump in his throat, which only hardened upon the thought that the way Jessie had started their conversation was disturbingly impersonal. There were no traces of cheerfulness in it, but also no traces of anger, just a default way to answer the call from a stranger, someone who didn’t matter all that much.

And maybe this was precisely what Jamie had become in Jessie’s life – a stranger who didn’t matter all that much. Of course, it couldn’t be emphasized enough that Jamie only had his own miserable self to blame for this turn of events.

“Um, hello. Hi, Jess.” Stumbling on fragments of the simplest words, Jamie tried to cover up his uneasiness with nervous laughter which did nothing but prove how uneasy he was.

“Right. Hi”, Jessie responded without any signs of discomfort on his side, but also with a slow deliberation. 

Even at this early point of their talk, Jamie could already tell what Jessie was being like towards him: cold. 

A usual Jessie, the way he used to be with Jamie or anyone else who he didn’t consider his enemy or a grand pain in the ass for that matter, wouldn’t hide his joy about hearing from him, lavishing him with mouthfuls of ‘how-you’re-doings’ and ‘why-didn’t-you-call-us, whatcha-been-up-tos’.

He was now essentially telling Jamie, _I’m not enough of a bad guy just to hang up on you or not even pretend to talk to you, but don’t count on me getting all hyped up about dealing with you, either_. 

Jamie swallowed and frowned in an effortful manner, trying to quiet his ferocious and relentless thoughts. These thoughts claimed that Jessie knew him well enough to realize how hard this kind of treatment was on him, and that he possibly even took vindictive pleasure in witnessing Jamie struggle so much to utter a straight sentence, to produce something as obvious as the reason why he was calling. 

“So, um… it’s happy birthday, I guess? I mean, I suppose it’s been happy already anyway, but today is the day to let you know that I wish for it for…well… to be happy”, Jamie sputtered awkwardly, somehow managing to slash and convolute the simplest and most conventional of lines. 

Jessie stoically took all of the gibberish, even though Jamie couldn’t help imagining him standing there with that telephone, all handsome and gorgeous and spirited, flashing that ruthless yet irresistible smirk as he could hardly wait to disconnect the call and tell Javi all about how Jamie was being an idiot again. 

“Sure, thanks for that”, he replied emotionlessly, emphasizing what he was thinking about Jamie’s call by what he didn’t say rather than with what he did say.

Jamie already knew he had made a fool of himself by even attempting that call. Was there any point wading into that swamp of humiliation any further? 

In that cringingly familiar streak of anxiety, he started to question the actual reason why he had called in the first place. His mind was too busy processing the emotions of embarrassment and rejection to remember.

“So… how are you feeling? Like, you know, now that you’re thirty? Past the magical barrier?” Sure, a clumsy small talk would totally be the way to win Jessie’s positivity over. Jamie rolled his eyes at his own conversational ineptness, even though this was still more tolerable to him than the silence letting him know with each passing second that he was an unwelcome caller. 

In contrast, Jessie had no problems whatsoever producing subsequent conversation-breaking replies. 

“Why should you ask that? You’re thirty too”, he observed matter-of-factly in a tone that implied in no uncertain terms that this thread was now over. The ease with which he pulled the rug from under Jamie’s feet was something that Jamie almost found admirable despite the circumstances and him being the damaged party.

“True”, Jamie admitted sheepishly. He actually meant by that _True, we have nothing to say to each other_ , rather than _True, it was a silly thing to ask_.

Scraping the willpower from the bottom of his soul to resist the nauseating sinking feeling in his stomach, Jamie decided that at this point things couldn’t get any worse, so he might as well cast his cautiousness aside and say something sincere and bold for a change. 

“You see… I just wanted to tell you that I wish you all the best, and that I hope your dreams will come true… and that you’ll be happy whatever you’re doing and whoever you’re with, because you deserve that.”

 _And I love you_ , he almost added by the power of habit or sheer impetus. Luckily, he braked before the dumbest line ever had the chance to escape his mouth and claim the shared space of his and Jessie’s auditory perceptions.

His acting skills were barely enough to keep his voice from cracking, but somehow they turned out just enough to make his ‘bold, sincere’ birthday wishes sound casual and effortless. Or so he preferred to imagine.

Nevertheless, this display of honesty, too, hadn’t impressed Jessie, but maybe that was for the best.

“Thanks”, he replied simply and coldly. Contrasting with Jamie’s demonstrative demeanor, he appeared completely unmoved – Jamie’s impression was that perhaps he hadn’t even been listening.

Jamie could hear loud, rhythmic thuds pounding straight into his eardrums, inflicting a very real, physical kind of pain on him. It was his own heartbeat, and it was telling him his inner anxiety had reached unbearable levels. The time was right to stop and give up right away.

Somewhere to the rear of those thuds, Jamie could hear muffled sounds of a shrill, fast-paced monologue in Mexican Spanish with random English interludes. It must have been Javi talking over the phone to someone from his family. Funny, it was only natural to have Javi around when you called Jessie, and still, right then and there Javi’s perky voice seemed so dissociated, so… so unreal. 

Right. Javi was now an important, indispensable part of Jessie’s world – he had been one for quite a few years now. And if this world felt this foreign, this unwelcoming to Jamie at the moment, it must have been because earlier he had evacuated himself from there freely, only to find the gates on the way back locked once he got the sudden self-indulgent, self-important idea to return there.

So what was that, again, about Jessie’s perceptiveness, about his sharp ability to know a liar for his duplicity? Undoubtedly, he was being so distant and unkind because he had unmasked Jamie as a fake and seen through his cheap manipulation tricks. Jessie simply knew, he must have known, that Jamie wasn’t all sweet and selfless, no matter how hard he was trying to pretend otherwise. 

After the long months of silence and eager isolation, Jamie had called just because he was needy, just because he suddenly wanted something from Jessie – and yet he had the nerve to call specifically on Jessie’s birthday to make it seem like he was all about caring about Jessie, thinking about nothing else than making Jessie feel appreciated and loved.

It wasn’t just calculating. It was plain pathetic. 

“Okay then”. In the midst of all the panicked and pained thought processes Jamie heard his own voice out of the blue. It was strangely calm and maybe even good-natured, like it was coming from beside himself and not as a part of him. This whole talk had turned too distressful to handle it otherwise, and yet Jamie didn’t know how to quit it – whatever was stopping him from simply hanging up? Did he actually believe that by keeping himself from throwing the phone against the wall and fleeing the scene in tears like a bullied schoolgirl he would still keep some amounts of dignity?

Now, for starters, _dignity_ , whatever that was? The way his life had been lately, it seemed that no other concept was as abstract, as difficult to grasp for Jamie as that.

“Say hi to Javi”, he stubbornly carried on. That weird sense of his voice coming from some split part of himself continued to resound within him. “I hope you have a wonderful evening today, whatever you’re planning to do.” 

He stopped right there, afraid not to make it seem like whatever they would be doing he was interested in joining them, or essentially in barging in on their perfect little celebration. Although he needn’t have worried about that – Jessie wouldn’t allow him to do anything like that anyway.

“I will. And I hope so, too”, Jessie responded in an already typical, all too predictable pattern of little more than echoing Jamie’s words, painstakingly observing the conventions so as not to disclose anything personal by any chance. 

“Great. Take care, then. And again, happy birthday”, Jamie could hear the voice from beside himself formulate yet another mechanical reply.

“You take care, too”, responded Jessie with what sounded like the peak of detachment in his usually so engaged, vigorous voice. 

Still, contrary to Jamie’s expectations, he didn’t hang up the phone just then yet. Jamie couldn’t quite tell if that was supposed to mean something. Was that pause intentional? Was Jessie waiting for Jamie to say something more, something else?

Something such as an apology for shutting them out and letting them down? For staying out of touch, out of their lives for too long and endangering their bond?

No… it can’t have been that. Why would Jessie even care about these things? 

Besides, an apology was simply out of the question. 

All that was left, then, was to exchange their goodbyes – and ironically, Jamie was the first to hang up. 

He put down the now deadly silent phone on the desk, exhaled heavily and buried his face in his hands.

A little surprisingly, he didn’t really feel much. Not despair, not anguish, not even plain lonely sadness. He was just tired. And hollow on the inside, just like that phone of his. His mind was unwittingly still and it wouldn’t even echo with what little scraps of words Jessie had reluctantly bestowed him with. 

With the corner of his eye, he peeked on his wristwatch to find out his break would soon be over. That was when another feeling began to sprout: resentment. Resentment at the thought of another hissing, growling, biting or otherwise uncooperative patient coming in through that door in an instant or two with its fleas or ticks or tapeworms or whatever, led or carried by their hysterical, ignorant, cognitively impaired owners who had an unbelievably hard time understanding instructions and explanations in everyday English language.

In a way, Jamie was bewildered by his own self. This kind of cynical, disdainful impatience at his cherished workplace was so unlike Jamie, so out of character. … Or maybe it wasn’t? Maybe that was who Jamie truly was: someone who deserved exactly the sort of treatment he had just faced on Jessie’s part. It was like Jessie had seen through him – he knew Jamie better than anyone in the world did, after all – and approached Jamie accordingly. 

In no time the lunch time was through, and no amount of grumbling, irritation or self-pity on Jamie’s part was able to prevent it happening. He coped by simply doing his thing, clenching his teeth and numbing himself to the pain of loneliness and dismissal until that wretched day was finally over.

A few more hours had passed and then he was free, discovering to a cynical sense of amusement that right now he would be more than happy to stay around for another shift. Instead, he returned home to an unresponsive Brandon, who was typically seated at his computer, head in the screen and a beer in his hand, hardly bothering to mumble a “hey” to Jamie’s fatigued “I’m back”. 

Trudging straight to the bedroom with a cat on each arm serving as his pillows of comfort, Jamie bitterly thought that maybe he should have been satisfied even with the little that he did get from Brandon that evening. After all, lately it hadn’t been so often the case that Brandon would even be there when Jamie returned home after work. Initially, Brandon’s explanations of his absence had always been the same: he’d either go jogging or late-night shopping, the latter because they tended to magically run out of necessary groceries (or beer) at most inconvenient times. 

So, those were the original explanations. And after a while, Jamie simply stopped asking. 

He also gave up trying to adjust their shopping plans so that there would be less need for those ‘emergency errands’ – it was wasted effort, because Brandon would always somehow come up with a reason to get out of the apartment. Jamie suspected that he even went as far as to intentionally forget to buy stuff so that later he could have an excuse to leave anyway. Jamie would sometimes still try the other solution, which was accompanying Brandon on those evening shopping sessions. But, needless to say, that wasn’t ever the nicest experience to have: on accord with his passive-aggressive tactics like those Jamie had been exposed to the other day when he insisted too much on their taking a bath together, Brandon would never bother to face Jamie with an outright ‘no’, but he made damn sure Jamie would regret the idea of being his chaperone. 

He would get sulky, silent, and, in case he did talk, scoffing and mildly mocking – especially that last part was new about Brandon, so it was an unpleasant surprise that he had such a side to him, and it made Jamie very uncomfortable. All the while, Brandon faithfully adhered to his _What do you mean ‘what’s wrong’, I’m fine, you’re the one making up problems here_ strategy. By this point, Jamie already knew that Brandon was messing up with him and his mind, acting in intolerable ways, but taking extra care to making it seem it was all Jamie’s problem and not his. Thus, Jamie was aware that he was being manipulated, and it made him feel nauseous to say the least – but he was at a loss as to how to stop it, or how to fight back. The notion that Brandon didn’t care about their relationship, so unlike Jamie he had nothing to lose, could never stray away from Jamie’s mind. 

Under such circumstances, Jamie came to the conclusion that his hands were tied. It was best, or at least easiest, to leave Brandon alone and stop obsessing over what he was up to during those escapades. 

… It wasn’t like Jamie knew anything for sure, right…? 

And Brandon usually really was right back, and he actually brought home the stuff he had said was missing. Maybe there was really nothing going on? Nothing other than Jamie being Jamie – fretful and jealous? 

Beaten down, queasy and cold on the inside, Jamie lay on the bed and closed his eyes. This felt like one of those days when he hit his own personal bottom. 

One of those – and they happened more often than he’d like to admit, especially in those years since Jessie had left him – when he couldn’t help thinking how easy it would be just to fall asleep and never wake up anymore. No more sorrow, no more loneliness, no more shame. Just falling into that pleasantly dark abyss, and falling, and falling, and melting away into cloudy nonexistence where no more pain could reach him. 

It wasn’t so much that he wanted to die. It was more that living took too much strength, cost too much effort, was too much of a strain. Such a temptation it was, that daydream that maybe he could just close his eyes and disappear, just be gone without a trace, and without consequences.

Just as he was sinking right into that fantasy that he might just fall asleep never to wake up again, Jamie heard the quiet buzz of his incoming text message ringtone. Annoyed at whoever dared to so disrespectfully jerk him out of his misery, he certainly took his time before he sat up and checked his phone.

He was on the verge of cardiac arrest when his telephone screen revealed to him that the sender had been Javi.

Jamie had no idea what Jessie’s baby boyfriend might have wanted from him at this time, but his imagination made sure he instantly had a fresh supply of most outrageous visions at his disposal. What all these visions had in common was the aspect of recognizing Jamie, like Jessie himself just had, for who he really was: an arrogant, self-absorbed, unreliable piece of shit.

Before he reached for the accept button with a stiff, strained thumb, his mouth had already gone dry, and his throat was squeezed enough to make him feel like he was about to suffocate. Because seriously, even if he had remembered all those unflattering things about himself, he still didn’t need Jessie’s lover to remind him of them all over again. 

In fact, he didn’t really need to remember that Jessie’s lover _even existed_.

Less than willingly, powered mostly by his desire to get this thing done and have it past him, Jamie ran his eyes through Javi’s text. Then he repeated that action all over again, mildly skeptical about what he had just seen.

Consistently disregarding of punctuation marks and capital letters, among a flood of cheerful, colorful emoticons which really gave Jamie the impression that he could hear the author of these words as he spoke them, the message said:

“Hola Jamie! Thanks for calling how U doin? Dont worry about Jessie U know how he is Hes still pissed at you about sth can’t even remember what 2b honest. But no worries hell get over it. When will U stop by? we miss you. Muchos besos”.

Jamie put the telephone away, breathing heavily like something had been chasing him. Then he lay on his side, covered his head with pillows, and a downpour of tears gushed out of him.

Javi’s message may have seemed innocuous enough, but these simple lines – _don’t worry, we miss you_ – had proven to be that one sharp point that pierced through the wall of Jamie’s defenses like a needle. And the wall collapsed right on him with a thud, making him face all the emotions he had been accumulating all day long: hurt, anxiety, regret, grief, isolation.

And, atop of it all – relief. 

Maybe, in spite of all his flaws, all his imperfections, all his oddity, there was still hope for him. Maybe there were still people who appreciated him anyway, people who said they needed him and who cared even though he had been cruel and unfair to them.

Maybe he wasn’t such a waste of space, after all.

How ironic it was that it should have been Javi who gave him that hope. The same Javi whom he had treated with the sense of superiority and contempt he didn’t always bother to conceal; the very same Javi whom he had once called half-illiterate straight to his face, whom he considered dumb, obsessed about his looks and shallow, because that was Jamie’s best line of defense against those gnawing feelings of jealousy over how sweet and innocent Javi was, something that Jamie could never even dream to rival. And yet, here Javi was, pure and kind-hearted enough to let Jamie know he cared even when Jessie himself had given up on him; the dear silly Javi who probably didn’t even realize he wasn’t supposed to worry about Jamie, much less reach out to him, because after all they were _enemies_ , or _opponents_ , or something.

For a moment there Jamie experienced a strong urge to call Javi and confide in him right then and there, about Brandon and all the crazy stuff that had happened to him over these last few months. He felt almost organically compelled to let the words and the agony behind them flow until there were no more secrets left. 

Jamie wasn’t, however, the kind of person who would act on his impulses, no matter the circumstances. And here, too, he simply waited until the urge had subsided.

He couldn’t allow himself to take advantage of Javi’s unassuming sign of kindness just like that. Even if Javi would handle it well, to Jamie himself the mere prospect was too humiliating. But first and foremost, dragging Javi straight into Jamie’s outrageous personal issues after those months of complete silence would be cynical and unfair. He couldn’t just go and use people and their sympathy like that. He just couldn’t.

Besides, just knowing that at least Javi was there, and would still be there if the need arose, was enough.

With an unsteady hand, Jamie grabbed the phone back and opened the reply window. 

“Thanks, but does Jessie know you’ve invited me over?” That was about the most personal message he was able to muster at the moment.

He put the phone away, not expecting Javi to reply all that soon – it was Jessie’s birthday after all, so they were certainly busy celebrating. He was quite astonished, then, to hear a yet another incoming text message buzz no sooner than he had placed the device away on his bedside table.

He couldn’t help but snort when he read Javi’s response: “ofcourse he doesnt whyd you even ask? just come when hes not around”, followed by a huge array of smiling and winking emoticons.

That was 100% Javi. He hadn’t changed a thing through all these years. Or should Jamie say, nothing had changed him through all these years. At the moment, Jamie found that genuinely admirable.

He couldn’t help it but reply with a playful: “… Well, I’m honored and everything, so don’t get me wrong, but is there any reason why you’d want me to come when Jessie’s not around?”

Again, Javi was quick to react. Apparently he was feeling terribly bored at that party or whatever they were throwing right now. Maybe Jessie was out there getting all involved in being the soul of the get-together, leaving Javi cast aside and unattended just like he had done so many times with Jamie. It had never seemed like Javi was at a risk of that happening to him, but maybe even Javi, too, wasn’t immune to the side effects of Jessie being a little too hot, a little too sexy, and a little too self-absorbed.

“Wanna know the truth? Lately Jessie’s grown himself a nice big papi beer belly. Its cute though still I think right now Im more attracted to U. But please dont tell Jessie his feelingsd b so hurt if he knew.”

This time Jamie burst with a fit of much more audible laughter. Other than the absurdity of Javi confessing his attraction to Jamie over Jessie, the vision of Jessie’s taut, athletic body burdened with a beer belly was plain hilarious – and, in the light of their failed telephone talk earlier that day, oddly satisfying, even if Jamie was fully aware that it remained in the realm of pure fantasy, begot by Javi’s whimsical humor.

Jamie hadn’t managed to cool down from the Javi-sponsored fit of amusement, much less think of a suitably witty reply, when Javi threw at him another slice: 

“Or does it happen to anyone whos thirty? U have one too? Will I get one when Im an old ass like you folks? Noooo mami, me not wanna grow so old.”

Jamie shook his head and laughed joyfully – and then, upon realization how long it had been since he last heard his own genuine laughter like that in the confinement of this apartment, he laughed some more.

Javi was seven years their minor. He also was a model, which meant he worked and lived in a youth-obsessed environment. Barely twenty when he met Jessie, he considered Jessie and Jamie dinosaurs, which he rarely failed to half-seriously make a point of should an opportunity arise. Feeling inferior to Javi with his youth, vitality and wonderful looks, and assuming that these quips were some sort of mockery targeted at him, Jamie tended to give Javi a cold shoulder for this kind of wisecracking.

Now, he suddenly saw it in a completely new light. It seemed playful, comical, and simply just right – and Jamie found himself endeared to it.

“Fuck you, and mind your words when you’re talking to adults”, he texted along with a lavish number of fun emoticons, at least fun by Jamie’s standards. He couldn’t let Javi think that just because he was born closer to 1990 and was naturally more proficient in the command of emoticons, he also was the only one entitled to their use.

“Sorry didnt mean 2 hurt U Jamie-papi. But U know me cant hide the truth. thats just not who I am”, was Javi’s next bantering reaction. And within seconds, another message followed: “Gotta go. See U soon, me hopes. Besos”, confirming Jamie’s assumption that Javi’s messages were his way to deal with the idleness while Jessie was busy doing anything else than taking care of him, which right now apparently had just changed.

But Jamie was alright with it and, oddly enough for his oversensitive self, he didn’t even take Javi’s unprompted getaway as a sign of rejection. He actually felt strangely relaxed and at ease, the light of this virtual encounter with Javi still glowing inside him.

When he closed his eyes, he could immediately see Javi radiating his sunshine, childlike smile at him, like he was trying to convince him everything would be alright, there was no need to worry, and he wasn’t ever alone.

Jamie kept that warm feeling inside him as he wiped with a sleeve the last traces of tears from the corners of his eyes. He gave his cats a couple of tender ear scratches, and then he bravely got up, resolute to go to the bathroom and wash his face, and then move to the kitchen and get himself some proper dinner.

He had suddenly realized how hungry he was, not having had a bite since early afternoon. And he knew that this realization was a great sign. It meant he was back to the world of the living, at least temporally.

And not even passing by a stone-faced, unconcerned, uninterested Brandon on his way to the kitchen could change that.

*** 

These last few weeks Brandon had had trouble sleeping. 

It was serious enough for Jamie to notice even with the increasingly limited time they’d spent together in the bedroom. 

It had been worrying enough, and for more than one reason, that Brandon would regularly come to bed only hours after than Jamie, sometimes past two or even three a.m. Owing to this, Jamie had mastered the art of quickly glancing at the wristwatch with just one eye open, or actually half-open, in an almost somnambulistic state, just to take a record of what the time was. 

When this had only begun to happen, the next day Jamie would sometimes try to inquire Brandon gently about his sleep patterns. Doing this, he only expressed his concern about Brandon not getting enough sleep, and asked if this amount of sleep deprivation didn’t interfere with Brandon’s efficiency and comfort at work. Whatever he would say, he was careful not to ever come close to implying what he thought Brandon was doing while sacrificing his sleep or rest time. 

Still, in spite of how cautious Jamie was trying to be, Brandon didn’t seem to appreciate his efforts. His answers were predictably evasive and curt. When Jamie persisted about clear answers, Brandon stressed that he actually _was_  
getting enough rest; that procrastinating in front of his computer in the evening was his idea of relax (never mind that his and Jamie’s time slot definitions of ‘evening’ were clearly discrepant); that with his flexitime he didn’t have to get to work so early every day, so he could sleep in every now and then; and that if he was tired after work, he would take a nap in the afternoon, of course mostly when Jamie wasn’t home and couldn’t verify this. Naturally, Jamie had his suspicions bordering on certainty that at least the last two reasons were a fake, but he could not confront Brandon about something he wasn’t even around to make sure of.

 _Confront_. That was the key word that gradually had sipped into Jamie’s daily mindset. It may not have been with him all the time, but it would patiently lurk in the shadows and treacherously stick its ugly head out to attack Jamie with its poisonous bite when he least expected it.

 _Confrontation_. A skill that Jamie had not yet possessed. An impending necessity he had no means and no talent to cope with. Each time he had tried to talk to Brandon either about his addiction or about his torturous past, the effect ranged from null to disastrous. With all the experience he had gathered by this point, even Jamie could not trust himself to have the ability not to blow this. 

So he put it off. He did whatever he could to talk himself out of this, to convince himself there was no need to bother Brandon with these idle talks he was so allergic to. Of course Jamie’s voice of reason told him otherwise, but scarred by the previous failures and scared of the possibly uncontrollable changes to their relationship another one of those talks might bring about, Jamie was desperate to switch his denial mode back on. 

How bad could it be?, he convinced himself soothingly, remembering that whatever it was that Brandon was doing at his computer during those late night hours, or on those ‘emergency evening errands’, or whenever Jamie was not around, apparently it didn’t affect his life so negatively and all was under control. 

After all, Brandon had his job now, he worked diligently at it, he would go out and actually integrate with the people – comparing to a few months before, it was an amazing improvement. 

Maybe Brandon had been right, then, that he had his grip on his own stuff, and whatever he did in his free time was none of Jamie’s business? As long as Brandon didn’t hurt himself or anyone else, which Jamie had no proof he did, Jamie had no right to intervene. 

Unfortunately for Jamie and his peace of mind, by this point denial didn’t quite work anymore, and wasn’t half as useful as it had used to be. A piece of him, his most honest and unyielding core, had realized by now that the worst was unfolding before his very eyes: Brandon was facing a full-blown relapse and there was no telling where it would lead, or rather mislead him this time. 

A loss of another job? Contracting an STD? Going bankrupt? Getting hurt or beaten again, this time maybe even dying? Possibilities abounded. While Jamie’s mind listed them with morbid curiosity during his own sleep-disturbed nights, his heart prompted him to cover his head with a pillow and shut these voices down. To stop listening. To stop being, if that was what it took to protect himself from those visions. 

By the end of August another thing had happened two or three times, not enough to conclude of it to be a pattern, but still a solid source of concern: Jamie woke up in the middle of the night, closer to dawn, not to find Brandon beside him at all. 

It wasn’t now just about Brandon staying up late and not going to bed together with Jamie. It was about Brandon choosing not too come to bedroom at all, or staying up all night altogether. 

Maybe it wasn’t necessarily all about the addiction, and Jamie was only imagining things. Maybe it was just that Brandon was fed up with Jamie and wanted to keep away from him. Maybe he was so done with him that even sleeping beside him – doing nothing at all, just sleeping – made him sick. Of course it was a hurtful prospect and a cruel thing to convince himself of, but the anguish of Jamie’s situation lay also in that he still preferred to think Brandon suddenly hated him like that rather than to consider that Brandon’s condition, again, was spinning out of control, with Jamie being the helpless witness in spite of his best efforts.

But still, during such moments Jamie found himself lying there in their bed all alone, just him and his incoherent drowsy thoughts; laced with the pale, dim rays of the break of day, the questioning whispers of his agitated, often self-contradicting mind would drive him crazy. 

So Brandon hadn’t even come to the bedroom this time, had he?

Or perhaps he had. Perhaps he was up already. Perhaps it just so happened that he somehow, amazingly, had managed to both enter and exit the bedroom at night without waking Jamie up even once, not even for a brief second or two. Maybe Jamie had been innocently sleeping on unaware of what was happening in his bedroom, and now was all ready and set to make a fuss out of nothing.

Then Jamie would move his hand down the sheets where Brandon would normally lie, and feel no traces of body warmth, no creases, no hollows, just an impersonal desk-flat surface inhabited by no one for dozens of hours.

Next, he would cautiously sit up, wary of the fact that doing so would irreversibly rouse him and make getting the precious two more hours or so of sleep that he still could afford unattainable. Anxious and irritable, he would run his fingers through his hair, rest his forehead upon his wrist, and stare at the door for a couple of minutes, wondering if he should get up, open them and see what was hiding behind them.

The truth was that eventually, he never did. He just didn’t have the courage. He couldn’t find it in him to walk out that door and face Brandon with whatever the matter was, for whatever was going on at the moment in his own living room, or kitchen, or bathroom, or better yet, away from his apartment. 

After all, to do that would mean precisely to _confront_ Brandon. And Jamie had used up both guts and ideas regarding how to do that.

Once Jamie first discovered there were nights when Brandon wouldn’t join him in bed at all, it wasn’t long before he also became aware of how really distressed and deranged Brandon had been these days. This definitely overturned those last convulsions of Jamie’s wishful denial that Brandon had been doing relatively alright despite his sleep deprivation and apparent preoccupation with unhealthy things. 

It occurred to Jamie one night with forceful clarity when he woke up at early dawn, about half past four – it amazed him how Brandon’s disrupted sleep routines affected his own to an extent he couldn’t remember when he had last slept all night through, without those mid-night breaks to figure out what Brandon was up to – to find Brandon indeed by his side in their bed, but awake. 

Brandon was lying on his side, facing away from Jamie, so Jamie couldn’t see him. Nevertheless, by his unsteady breathing, the infrequent, but pretty much conscious tossing movements of his arms, and the overall tense air around him, Jamie did sense that Brandon wasn’t asleep. 

What was the matter with him? Was he too tired to sleep? Too excited to unwind? The dose of stimulation he had served to his own body deep in the night might easily have been too much for this parasympathetic system to handle.

How often did it happen, then? Was that a usual thing for Brandon by now? Did he ever sleep at all these days?

Listening to his own deep, apprehensive breaths, his eyes tracing the dim silhouette of Brandon’s nape and slightly slouched shoulder line, Jamie felt like his body was being washed away by the rush of his restless thoughts, a regular nighttime visitor inside his mind over the last few weeks. 

The blend of emotions Jamie experienced because of those thoughts was tumultuous and difficult to untangle, although one thing was for certain: unlike the times when Brandon stayed up at his computer and apparently was having a total ball in spite of the restlessness he inflicted upon Jamie, now anger wasn’t a part of the mix. 

Jamie closed his eyes, rubbed his eyelids as if he wanted to shake the sleep away, then opened them again. Brandon’s back remained in his sight, unmoved by even an inch, but as Jamie quietly lifted himself up on the elbow, he found that Brandon’s eyes were indeed half-open, blankly gazing into the distance, fixed somewhere on the window on the wall opposite to the bed.

From this angle, Brandon looked really run down and fragile. This alluring, confident man he showed to the world on a daily basis was now nowhere to be found in place of this exhausted little kid desperate to get some sleep and to run as far as he could, anyplace he could, away from his own head, from the unresolved issues and haunting memories.

A kind of long-forgotten fondness had begun to bud inside Jamie, a stream of tenderness and compassion flowing through his blood right into his heart.

For once, after what seemed an eternity of resentment, disappointment and painful feelings of rejection, Jamie could see Brandon as something else, something more than merely a source of his suffering. In these quiet, motionless moments of a late summer sunrise, Jamie could swear he could feel Brandon’s mood and emotions, virtually see them glow from those rounded shoulders and cowering posture. These slumping shoulders screamed fatigue, insecurity and despair. Brandon looked so powerless, so… so frail.

He was broken and lonely. Which happened to be exactly what Jamie thought of himself, too. 

These last few weeks had been so hard on Jamie he had forgotten what brought him and Brandon together in first place. He had forgotten how alike they really were.

Abandoning Brandon would be self-abandonment. Growing the bitterness and hostility toward Brandon would be to breed regrets, self-doubt and self-hatred.

Now he remembered he _loved_ Brandon, he really did. He loved him, and wanted to love him, the way he himself needed to be loved – the way nobody cared to love him.

He had let himself be deceived by the illusion projected by Brandon that they were enemies on the opposite sides of a fence, each fighting for his own interests and pushing his self-will forward. But right now, in this blessed moment of clarity, Jamie saw the illusion for what it was.

They were in this together, and at their core, they both yearned for the same thing: to make themselves feel accepted and wanted, to make their lives worthwhile… worth anything, for that matter.

Moving closer to Brandon, Jamie placed his head on the pillow right beside Brandon’s head, near enough to feel Brandon’s soft hair tickle his face as he breathed in and out. It struck Jamie how it seemed an eternity since they had last been so close, in such a tender, unforced manner.

“Hey”, he whispered softly, trying to capture Brandon’s attention. 

Brandon stayed motionless, his eyes still focused before him, like he was completely unaware of Jamie’s presence. Jamie eventually doubted if Brandon had even heard him, so he repeated the attempt.

“Brandon, are you alright?”

He decided not to ask any of those stupid questions with self-evident answers such as ‘are you awake?’ or ‘trouble sleeping?’. The situation commanded respect, and Jamie intended to show it by getting right to the point.

Brandon only answered after a longer while, slowly and drowsily, almost silently, with a certain robotic ring to his quieted voice.

“Yeah.”

Well, Jamie couldn’t have expected Brandon to give him any other reply, could he? It wasn’t like Brandon wanted _him_ to understand. It wasn’t like Brandon wanted _him_ in his world, that silent lonely world he had locked himself up in again, either.

Shaking his head in resignation, Jamie pulled himself even closer to Brandon. He wrapped his arms around Brandon’s waist and rested his chin against Brandon’s shoulder, warming the cold, dry skin of Brandon’s neck with his slightly nervous breathing.

“You will be”, he pronounced with utter conviction, even with slightly arrogant confidence, although deep inside he knew that the person he was trying to assure of it the most really was himself rather than Brandon. “I promise you, you will”, he declared further, plunging even deeper into that mire of empty vows whose only purpose was to make him feel better about their relationship at the moment. 

He grabbed Brandon’s hand and gripped it tightly, holding onto him like the dearest treasure Brandon really was in Jamie’s mind right now.

Still, despite all this tenderness and reassurance poured on him through Jamie’s touch, Brandon remained static and lifeless in Jamie’s arms, like nothing made any difference, like he couldn’t care less. Worse yet, he seemed to grow stiff and cold with each passing second, like Jamie’s embrace displeased him, bringing him irritation instead of comfort.

Jamie waited in vain for any kind of reaction on Brandon’s part, positive or negative – anything would have done. Yet, eventually he had to admit there was no use expecting anything else than that familiar, apathetic indifference. 

He had got used to the hurt caused by Brandon’s unresponsiveness to the degree that he didn’t give it any further thought. Instead, he summed it up with a deep, helpless sigh as he let go of Brandon’s comatose body and pulled himself up from the bed.

“I’m going to make you some lemon balm tea, okay?”, he announced and left for the kitchen, correctly deciding not to wait longer than a few seconds for Brandon’s reply. Greeted again by Brandon’s consistent silence, he moved away towards the kitchen.

As he opened the bedroom door, he glanced once more on Brandon’s inert form and absent gaze. It was the strangest feeling, seeing how Brandon’s body was right there with him, how he could touch it and witness its presence with all his senses, when all the while Brandon’s mind was wandering somewhere far away, absolutely out of reach.

It was as if Brandon had logged out, disengaged to a degree he really wasn’t there anymore.

Walking slowly into the kitchen and switching the electric kettle on, Jamie began to realize that perhaps it was a bad idea to leave the room and suddenly find himself in this deadly silent space where he was all alone, this time also physically, just with his poisonous, ever so creative thoughts. They had been quick like a flash to return, a polar opposite to the sappy self-satisfied nonsense about togetherness and compassion that Jamie’s head had been so full of barely minutes before.

As he was standing there, leaning against the kitchen wall, idly waiting at some ridiculous morning hour for the water to boil – to prepare the tea that Brandon perhaps wouldn’t even bother touching, because why should he take care of his own sleep, or still less, why should he appreciate Jamie’s efforts to do the same in his stead – Jamie was suddenly hit by the pointlessness of it all.

 _I thought we were getting… somewhere_ , he thought with an odd, sharp certainty, so uncharacteristic of this early hour that had snatched the precious sleep away from him. _I really thought we were in this together – that we wanted the same thing – that we had the same goal ahead of us._

_Wasn’t the goal for Brandon to get better? Didn’t we want to get him fixed so that we could stand a chance, so that we could at least try being together?_

_Or has it been just my idea all along?_

_It’s not like Brandon ever said he believed in all those childish notions, in the outdated myths such as relationships, romance or commitment. If anything, he claimed to the contrary._

_It must have been just me then, after all. Somehow, I have imagined I could get him to share my dreams in spite of himself. I thought that if only I could make him see, if only I could make him realize we’re meant for each other, and how perfect we are together, and how happy I could make him…_

Swallowing on the grayish daybreak bitterness, Jamie rested his forehead against the refreshingly cold refrigerator door, which accurately if comically resembled Brandon’s unwelcoming aura of the last few weeks.

_So that’s that, then. I guess I got what I wanted. A stranger inside my bed, stealing my time and my life away from me, driving me crazy while he himself just doesn’t give a damn about me or about anything, anything at all except when he can jerk off next or how to jump to another porn site so that nobody will notice._

He wrapped his arms around his own shoulders, suddenly freezing to the bone. An ill-timed reminiscence of his brother – the good-looking, confident, successful man Jamie had known all his life he couldn’t even dream to come close to – made him shiver.

Kevin would laugh his ass off if he could see this. His mushy little failure of a brother got himself into another cute fairytale from his sentimentality worship scheme, still trying to hold on to the illusion that if he chose someone damaged enough to need someone as pathetic as him, he’d make it work and make him stay, happy endings, riding off to the sunset and everything.

_I guess Kevin would be right. I’m not man enough to earn my happy ending._

As he poured hot water into the cup to brew the herbal tea bag, Jamie again felt exhausted and completely helpless. He was just going through the motions –in the scale of both that morning and their relationship with the direction it was taking. He had set the course out of idealistic naivety and thoughtlessness, and now he apparently lacked something – the vision, the courage, the humility perhaps? – to go back.

So he waded on instead in that zombie-like trance, ready to take every step all over again, repeating in the process every mistake and everything that hadn’t work so far. Submissive to everything he had inflicted upon himself with his own lame choices, he might have been angry with Brandon for not caring about him, about them, for not loving him back, but he knew acutely well he had no one else to blame but himself. 

Jamie took his time waiting for the tea to brew properly. He used the interval to feed the cats and change the litter – he figured he’d have to do that at some point soon anyway, so why waste time? 

Ten minutes later, the wristwatch hand approaching half past five, he walked back into the bedroom with a steaming mug of in his hand, only to find Brandon asleep.

Or at least with his eyes closed, and nonreactive as before. 

It was anyone’s guess if Brandon had really managed to steal some sleep or if it was his subversive way of avoiding further contact with Jamie by pretending he was asleep.

For some reason, Jamie had no doubts it was the latter – and he reacted accordingly, which meant: with sizzling indignation.

First, however, driven by a self-righteous impulse, he still made sure if Brandon was genuinely ignoring him. 

He seated himself by Brandon’s side, right beside his pillow, the mug close enough to make the steam flow and wrap itself around Brandon’s face. If Brandon had in fact somehow managed to fall asleep over this mere couple of minutes, reasoned Jamie, his sleep couldn’t be fast enough not to wake up at a sudden whiff of warm air encircling his face.

Yet, Brandon didn’t respond. There wasn’t even a slightest change in his facial expression, which would have been natural if he had been asleep and thus had had no control over his bodily reactions, especially with his sleep still relatively shallow. 

He should have physically reacted immediately to Jamie’s closeness and the warmth of the lemon balm mug; instead, he had remained still, in a distinctly artificial, theatrical way.

He was blatantly faking it. He must have thought Jamie a complete idiot.

Jamie waited then a couple more seconds. It wasn’t like he expected any breakthrough to happen – it was more like wordlessly daring Brandon to respond, to acknowledge Jamie’s presence anyhow. In a way, or so he would think with an inflated air around him, he was giving Brandon one last chance in that scene.

Which Brandon, obviously, refused to take.

Hardly containing the fury raging underneath his skin – the fiery outburst which seemed to have come out of nowhere, fed by the week-long fatigue, wracked nerves and plain old self-sacrificing being there for someone else – Jamie got up energetically, indeed with enough prowess to make the mattress rock like a raft on a stormy open sea. Then, with still more vigor, he shut the door behind him as he left the bedroom. 

It wasn’t perhaps as much as slamming the door – or maybe it was? Whichever the case, Jamie knew he shouldn’t have worried if his manner of closing the door had been a little too forceful. After all, poor Brandon was so worn out, so drained that not even dead-waking level of noise could impress him, right?

Gritting his teeth, clenching his fists, and shaking all over with minor yet disturbing enough trembling, Jamie paced his way to the bathroom.

This time, he didn’t even bother to close the door behind him, as if he provoked Brandon to hear what he was doing, to hear the loud splash of the tea landing in the toilet. The very demonstrative flush was supposed to shout out on Jamie’s behalf, _See what you’ve done? See how you’re making me feel? Are you happy now?_.

Expectedly, however, once the echo of the flushing died down, other than the deafening silence laced with Jamie’s own frantic heartbeat, nothing ever answered to Jamie’s unspoken screams.

He rolled down the wall and sat on the floor, face buried in his hands, powerless to stand on his own two feet, powerless to say or do anything – like this one angry outburst which he hadn’t even targeted at the one who caused it had drained all of his vitality.

He only could sit still, tears mechanically bursting from his eyes, because at least crying never seemed to require any effort from Jamie – that was the one thing he could do matter-of-factly, like he just didn’t care, while everything else in life seemed a constant struggle.

Crying may have been the only activity he was capable of right now, but it could never change the essence of his being powerless. Powerless to change anything – powerless to make a difference in his own damn life. Powerless to take a stand. 

Powerless to _confront_ Brandon’s mute, derisive declaration: _You’re not worth shit, and I couldn’t care less about you_. 

The outpour of tears soon stopped on its own, as suddenly as it had begun. Jamie was so tired he couldn’t even afford a decent cry, a fact he observed with scorching irony – he was such a wimp, apparently, that not even wailing was his forte anymore. 

He closed his eyes, stinging with the salty solution that his eyelids were soaked in, and leant with his back against the door. The unforeseen storm was through now. Now Jamie was just exhausted, and empty. 

In one of those rare moments of sobriety, his common sense shining through all the aggravation, the drama and the incessant sense of immediacy, Jamie started to wonder just how much longer could he go on like this. 

And was it even worth it going on? Where were they even headed? He thought he had been saving Brandon, but as it seemed, Brandon needed no saving. He also didn’t look half unhappy as of now, save for those moments when Jamie nagged him about therapy or his sex life or their relationship or his past… put shortly, whenever Jamie bothered him with his own annoying savior self. 

The truth was, maybe it wasn’t Brandon that Jamie was trying to save, and maybe it had never been Brandon all along.

Maybe it had always been Jamie himself. Maybe all Jamie wanted was to save himself and make himself happy, but to go for it directly would be a dissonance with his selfless angel persona, so he needed a miserable trainwreck of a man as an excuse for doing all the things he really would love someone to do for himself.

The minutes went on and on; time was elapsing mercilessly. There was no use trying to get some sleep now even if Jamie wanted to. Then, it wasn’t like he dreamt – no pun intended – so much of going back to that room and to that bed where Brandon lay.

In fact, for the first time since they had met, Jamie realized on a conscious level that the prospect of sharing his bed with Brandon actually appalled him.

His throat was parched and his lips were dry. Then, it was so difficult to get up and get some water from the kitchen. Maybe he shouldn’t have flushed that tea, after all. He would have made decent use of it, and his efforts appreciated by no one wouldn’t have been so totally wasted.

Not that it made any difference if his efforts had been wasted or not. Not that anything he did mattered.

Not that he mattered.

He exhaled slowly and deeply the tension that was about to rip his skull apart from the inside. He was almost done here, he told himself as he brushed his ruffled locks back from his forehead, and casually wiped his face with the palm of his other hand. Just another two, maybe three minutes of wallowing in self-pity, and then he would be ready to go.

After all, even his heartbreak couldn’t stop the world from turning. A new day was just coming, and with it, new events, new plans, new tasks… along with the same old hope.

Because Jamie wasn’t ready to give up. Not just yet. And no dark moments of doubt or despair could change that. 

He had fought so hard. He had built so much out of nothing in this crazy, seemingly pointless relationship. How was he supposed to stand still and watch it fall apart now?

At the very least, he was _enough of a man_ not to.


	4. September: It ain't over till it's over

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brandon and Jamie keep spiralling down: Brandon into his addiction and Jamie into his efforts to control Brandon and to make him admit he cares about their relationship. They get increasingly tangled up in a dance of reactivity and one-upping, losing sight of what they're in this for and where they want to be headed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter complete - finally. Any bets if I can finish the next one in 2018?

Starting September, Jamie decided to take the matters in his own hands.

He brushed away the bothersome question of what exactly had he been doing until now if not taking the matters in his own hands. Because whatever it was, apparently it wasn’t enough, alright? It wasn’t the real deal, the right thing. _Now_ was the time to do the right thing. _Now_ was the time to be ingenuous and brave. 

Ingenuous, because he needed as much creativity as ever in finding out what else he could still do to get Brandon to admit he was in trouble and needed help. And brave, because once he discovered those ways he could still negotiate with Brandon, or use to persuade him, he would sure as hell need all the courage in the world to dare even mentioning that touchy – all pun intended – subject matter in Brandon’s presence.

Thus, swinging into a full-blown action mode, Jamie had shaken off fairly easily the gloom of those despondent final days of August. He had no time to mope, to go around feeling slighted, insulted and depressed. He needed all the brain power he could afford to help Brandon, and save their relationship in the process – because this time around, the stakes really were that high and there was no denying it.

Once, four years ago, Jamie had already made that mistake he was so wary of repeating right now. Wrapped in the soft overcoat of his denial, positive that he was the one to make demands and decisions, he had missed all the signs that Jessie wanted out of the relationship, and let himself be taken by horrifying surprise when one day Jessie left him with that single, irreversible goodbye. 

All this time, Jamie had been thinking he was the wronged party; he hadn’t even as much as sniffed the risk of Jessie being the one to walk away. Soon, he ended up stupefied at Jessie’s casually breaking up with him. Somehow in the meantime, as if in an alternative world only parallel to that which Jamie had been living in, Jessie had grown tired and irreparably loveless of him. 

The shock. The pain. The devastation of having what you loved and cared for the most, what meant the world to you, snatched away from you in the blink of an eye. The hollow, toxic hurt that followed. There was no way Jamie was letting that happen to him all over again. 

So this time, for a change, Jamie had seen – or so he thought – the crisis between him and Brandon for what it was, and was determined to undertake the appropriate countermeasures before it was too late.

The slight problem was, what the said countermeasures should be?

Jamie wasted no time in trying to figure them out. He thought about them anywhere he went, day and night. 

At work, during the breaks or those brief intervals between the subsequent patients’ visits, which eventually made him tread the thin line of distraction and absent-mindedness at the workplace; at home, sitting in the bedroom and gobbling down a yet another book on sex addiction, while Brandon was sitting at his computer and doing his thing just behind the wall; or in the night, during those strenuous awake moments, tossing and turning from all the stress and the excitement that the mission to figure out how to fix Brandon brought him. 

He needed to devote all that time to these things, he told himself, even if it got the best of him. Caution was the baseline; analyses needed to be made, and groundwork for any further steps needed to be laid. It was all appropriate, given how high the stakes were. And none of that was being obsessive – it was just being thorough.

For about a hundredth time Jamie came to realize that there was no more room left for the illusion, or should Jamie say delusion, that Brandon would admit he had a problem and go to therapy out of his own free will. Brandon was deep in denial about his condition, safely hidden in that trench of his fantasies, secrets and lies – and, amazing as it was, he seemed happy with it. 

And he would stay happy until something happened again, like another beating, another gang act, or some kind of a narcotic trance he wouldn’t wake up from anymore. It was amazing how unaware of all these possible consequences Brandon appeared – and as he didn’t exactly share what was going on inside his head, it was all Jamie’s guess if Brandon really was so clueless and had so successfully blocked out the scary scenarios, or if it was the reverse, if he was in fact conscious of the risk and was even turned on by the playing with fire factor. 

Not that it mattered too much which one it was. Either way it was Jamie’s job to keep Brandon safe from those consequences. Whatever lay ahead, Jamie refused to see Brandon hurt again – or, by extension, to see himself hurt by it, too.

If he couldn’t convince Brandon to go to the therapy, he had to make him. It was harsh, but logical.

And if Brandon refused to seek help because he insisted he needed none and he had no problem, it was Jamie’s task to make him see otherwise.

In other words, he had to make Brandon face his issues and defects. He had to call out on Brandon’s lies and expose them for what they were. He had to make it in such an efficient, unequivocal way so that there would be no room for dispute, no escape routes for Brandon and his excuses, his stories, all his I’m-justs and I’ve-been-onlys. He had to prove that he was right, and moreover, he had to show to Brandon that he knew he was, confident and unshakable.

In short, he had to catch Brandon in the act.

He had to find evidence that Brandon was, indeed, a sex addict – obsessive, out of control, and very ill.

But how did Jamie go about finding that evidence? This was the assignment pondering which kept him up and entertained during his long, and mostly lonely, bedtime hours in late August and early September. 

The simplest solution, reasoned Jamie, would probably be to catch Brandon by surprise and look at his laptop monitor while he was surfing his usual adult-content sites. Of course, Jamie was aware that this move wouldn’t solve all that much – predicting Brandon’s reactions with the ultra-sharp accuracy generated by months of experience, Jamie expected Brandon to dismiss his accusations with carefree rationalizations such as ‘It’s just an ad’ or ‘It’s something I clicked on accidentally’ or ‘a guy from work sent me these as a joke’. And while these rationalizations would be unbelievable to the point of absurd, they would leave Jamie disarmed as to prove his point, making it impossible to confirm his allegations. 

Nevertheless, for starters even this much would to. If he persisted, if he caught Brandon with those ‘ads’ and ‘accidental clicks’ enough times, then maybe… 

Anyway, you couldn’t call a lie for what it was if you had no evidence, right? 

So, the time had come for gathering the evidence. Jamie wasn’t exactly feeling comfortable with the idea, even though far he was from identifying his intentions as spying, stalking or damaging to Brandon’s privacy. It just wasn’t his style to pry so much into someone’s personal life. He was the kind of person who, if he was refused something, would rather retreat and withdraw than persist until he received what he wanted. 

This time, however, the end fully justified the means, and Jamie knew he just had to handle that slight degree of discomfort of acting out of character and against his own day-to-day rules.

The circumstances were special. Brandon needed to be saved; their relationship needed to be saved, too. Rules didn’t apply… or at least, they applied less than they’d usually do.

Sincerely convinced of the truth and righteousness of all of the above, and armed with a genuine feeling he was doing the best he could, Jamie launched his magnificent Project Screen Peek.

Ever the fine tactician, he would try out a number of strategies to increase the probability that at least one of them would work. Sometimes he would lurk in the bedroom or the kitchen for a while and wait until the time was right – meaning until he thought Brandon could feel safe and private enough in front of the computer to let down his guard – and then he would casually enter the living room and walk by Brandon’s desk, hoping to catch a glimpse of those adult-tube sites or whatever it was that Brandon couldn’t keep his eyes off. At other occasions, he would approach Brandon with a sweet, slick smile and take a seat by his side, insisting that he needed to show Brandon something on the computer right now, and using that time to screen Brandon’s desktop or bookmarks for the much looked-for proofs.

How naïve it had been of him, realized Jamie in hindsight, to believe that Brandon would jump on the hook that easily! 

Brandon was a seasoned trickster who had built a huge part of his life on secrets and deceit. He must have had that sixth sense that warned him of the impending danger, one that alerted him whenever he was about to be exposed. And he reacted to its warnings accurately, never allowing Jamie to see what he expected or was waiting to see, not even once. 

Not a single porn bookmark, not a single not-safe-for-work image in sight, not even any suspicious lewd chatroom windows.

Seriously, Brandon was either a genius of disguise or had some kind of freaky superpowers. When he didn’t resent them, Jamie found himself actually admiring these abilities.

This kind of untold hide-and-seek went on for a couple of days, and Jamie quickly grew tired of its futility. Somehow, Brandon was always one step ahead. Jamie simply couldn’t catch him.

In the end, Jamie started to doubt his own perceptions, his own sanity. If he couldn’t prove anything, maybe it was because nothing was there? He was going crazy with obsessive mistrust while Brandon might as well have been innocent. 

Innocent until proven guilty, wasn’t it?

_It’s not that he’s some kind of a sex-obsessed pervert_ , whispered a cruel voice inside Jamie’s head, promptly reinvigorated after those exhausting days of fruitless searching. _It’s just that he doesn’t love you. Stop looking outside yourself. You’re a failure._

Haunted by these echoes of his own self-loathing, Jamie was, expectedly, highly motivated to convince himself that the truth was otherwise. The collapse in their relationship wasn’t about him at all. It was all about Brandon’s addiction, so blatant it was almost absurd. All that isolation in his own little world, just him and the laptop; the late-night shopping escapades with lazy excuses; the insane amounts of time he’d spend in the bathroom; his distance and absent-mindedness – there was no way all these were a coincidence, with no sexual distraction as a common denominator.

Thus his own head galvanized Jamie once again into a yet more frantic search for evidence that Brandon was indeed an out-of-control addict. 

This determination was enough to make Jamie get out of bed at night the next time he woke up without Brandon at his side. 

This time, he wasn’t scared of what he would see when he opened the door to reveal the living room wrapped in the midnight stillness; rather, he was afraid that there would be nothing to see.

It didn’t quite occur to him how far had he come since that chilling March night half a year ago, when the sight of Brandon hypnotized by the pornographic reel on the computer screen evoked his compassion and tenderness instead of the self-righteous anger and the desire to win.

Although, undeniably, Brandon wasn’t the same now, either. With the cheeky, unwavering attitude towards what he was doing, exuding the aura of entitlement and sneakiness, he was far from an endearing figure. It was almost as if he implicitly dared Jamie to compete with him in that crazy little mind game, to try and defeat him. He had changed in synch with Jamie, or maybe it was Jamie who had changed in synch with him. 

Or maybe they both had been changing simultaneously, pulling each other’s strings in a kind of a morbid, if captivating, dance. 

And so, upon realizing that he was alone in the dead of an unusually windy, early September night, Jamie wiped the heavy load of sleep from his eyes and almost jumped to his feet, instantly conscious and alert like he had actually been waiting for that moment to happen. 

He resolutely opened the door and entered the dim living room, only to find no one – and nothing there.

‘Nothing’ essentially meant Brandon’s laptop. It was missing from the desk where Brandon usually sat. 

Needless to say, Brandon was nowhere in sight, too.

Jamie could feel his heart race instantly, cold sweat dripping down his temples, a streak of chill running down his spine. His body entered a full fight-or-flight mode; he needed no time to process what was going on. He wanted to find out what was going on, he wanted the truth, and at the moment it was all that mattered.

Carefully and unsteadily, like in a trance, Jamie trudged into the hall to confirm through the door glass that the bathroom light was on.

So Brandon was in there. With the laptop.

And Jamie knew exactly what Brandon was doing there, like he had the laser sight that let him see through the walls. He could picture Brandon in detail – the vision based on the one event that he once had witnessed in reality, and spiced up by his imagination – as he was sitting there, on the toilet or on the bathtub edge (that very same bathtub in which they had shared some of their most magical, precious moments together…), computer on his lap, a hand in his pants, lips pursed or maybe wide open, eyes glistening feverishly as he drifted away somewhere he couldn’t be reached, off to a world of delusional excitement, an endless carnal fancy filled with empty, hysterical thrills. 

Who was Jamie to compete with all this?

Among the expectedly mixed feelings that stormed Jamie’s head – the usual set of anger, confusion, regret and hurt – one started to push its way forward all the way into Jamie’s consciousness, one not as familiar until right now: betrayal. 

In a flashlight it occurred to him that Brandon was taking away from him what was rightfully his. He consistently denied him his affection, his commitment, his presence, because he had to save it all for female objects flashing their impersonal private parts – and who knew for what else.

It wasn’t supposed to be like that, Jamie thought as he wearily leant against the living room doorway. After all he had done for Brandon, after all he had risked and sacrificed to make their relationship work… he didn’t deserve to lose it all to a stream of pixelized titillation, defeated in such an insidious, unfair fight.

Not to mention he didn’t deserve these things to be done to him in his own house, and Brandon’s kinks to tarnish his own bathroom.

Sick in his stomach and jittery in his head like on a rollercoaster ride gone wrong, with his hand over his eyes Jamie sneered as second by second, breath by breath, everything became clear to him.

So that was how Brandon had been doing it all this time. That was how he had managed to keep indulging in his addiction while minimizing the risk of getting discovered. He used the time while Jamie was awake but looking away to turn himself on with whatever caught his fancy, and only afterwards, when Jamie had gone to bed, he would arrange the show proper, locking himself up in the privacy of the bathroom, where he could go on for hours and hours unnoticed and hidden, effectively muffling any sounds related to his activities, and probably having a long list of unassailable excuses should Jamie ever find him in this setting at this hour. It was such a simple solution, and it allowed him to do that much more than just sitting around and jerking off right there in the living room, which was essentially an open invitation to get busted.

He was a smart one after all, that Brandon, huh? Admittedly, he had some firm reasons for that confident arrogance of his.

But, if he thought that he was smarter than Jamie, he was dead wrong. 

Looking up, and then at the still dimly glowing, fearfully silent bathroom door, Jamie let out an inaudible gasp of shaky breathing, his body so tense it caused him physical pain. 

There he was, then. He had his proof. His long awaited, sought at a price of increasingly obsessive, time-consuming speculations, proof.

He was so close now. Just a single step, just a single pound at a door. He was just one step away from realizing what he had set out to do.

Just one step away… 

He reached out his hand approaching the door, then he withdrew it. Then he reached out again, looking at his hand in half-amazement and half-confusion, like it was a foreign body he had no idea where it had come from. 

His head had gone all empty, the way it liked to do on the most pivotal and tense moments of his life. 

What was he doing there again? What was he there for? Why did he want to do that?

A sinking feeling in his stomach let him know how afraid he was of what would happen when he took that step and revealed to Brandon he was right there, knowing exactly what he had been up to in there.

A pounding of the rushing blood straight onto his temples let him know how ashamed he was, and how he didn’t want to get through the humiliation of Brandon’s predictable irresponsiveness, his refusal to own up to the mess he had been making, and his demonstration of a complete lack of remorse over what he had done – what he had become – whatsoever. As if him treating Jamie like trash and doing all this crazy stuff behind his back hadn’t been degrading enough to Jamie.

An incontrollable dizzy spell, like someone had grabbed the backrest of an easy chair he was seated in and forcefully pulled it backwards, let him know just how tired he was. A sudden reality check made him realize he couldn’t handle another late night fight with Brandon, with all the drama and door-smashing crisis as the inevitable consequence. He just didn’t feel up to the task right now.

All this had won against Jamie’s initial outrage. It had also proved more powerful than the excitement over finding the evidence that he had been so painstakingly searching. 

He simply decided – no, he felt that he had to – let it go. Just for now. 

Tomorrow would still be another day, right? With his mind refreshed and emotions calmed, he would definitely be more fit to confront Brandon about what he had just witnessed. He needed his strength, all of it, to measure up against Brandon’s cunning, manipulative ways. 

That was what Jamie reasoned on his wobbly way from the hall back to the bedroom. He tried to convince himself he was just being reasonable and realistic. And yet, when he returned to the empty bed, as he felt the warm, safe softness of the mattress and the welcoming texture of the pillows, the dam burst again.

He didn’t know what he was feeling anymore. All that he felt for certain was: overpowered. 

He was just so lonely and so helpless while the waterfalls of tears spilled all over the pillows. Everything seemed so surreal, like he couldn’t recognize his own life anymore. He had thought he wanted the answers, and now that he got them, he had a hard, painful time accepting them, feeling he had been better off without them after all.

It had all been so simple back in the day, hadn’t it? Back when he had been all so guileless and clueless, convinced that all it would take for his happily ever after would be to get Brandon to cope with his problems and make him into a functional, emotionally healthy adult. In that picture there was no space for Brandon’s own preferences and differences of opinion – no, they didn’t even bear thinking about. Because why wouldn’t Brandon want a supportive relationship, why wouldn’t he want to be cared for, nurtured and loved? Why wouldn’t the prospect of gaining all these things win Brandon over eventually?

A deadly whisper sharp and precise as a stab straight in the heart gave Jamie an obvious answer why. 

Brandon simply didn’t love him back, and didn’t want to learn to love him, either. No amount of soliciting, bargaining and tempting would work if Brandon didn’t care about being loved, cherished and looked after by someone like Jamie.

Jamie’s perfect dream world of the future was falling apart, ever more tangibly – and he felt like he was falling apart along with it, too.

He knew himself well enough to trust himself to wake up in the morning with a fresh load of energy and ideas to get going, to integrate what he had found out about that night and make the best of the knowledge that he could. For now, however, yet again, for what seemed a countless time within the span of barely a couple of weeks, crying was the only thing he was capable of, and crying himself to sleep appeared the sole thing left for him to do that night. 

Quietly sobbing with his face buried in the pillows, he thought for one second he could use some more demonstrativeness, just to make Brandon realize – when he came back, if he still came back that night at all – what he was doing to Jamie. Maybe moving the pillow more to Brandon’s side, so that he would find it was all soaked with Jamie’s tears, would do the trick…

The most despondent part of it was the sober, rational insight that told Jamie he would be better off if he didn’t even try to make Brandon understand, to force him into compassion with an unspoken ‘See what you’ve done to me?’, to make him admit to anything, to make him care.

Because he didn’t care. He just didn’t care. Nothing Jamie would say or do could change that.

Still, as the dawn was approaching and a shallow, unsteady sleep was finally coming down to him, Jamie remembered his mantra: he couldn’t give up, not just like that, not now. There had to be something that would work, he only hadn’t come up with it yet.

Like that old Lenny Kravitz song said, _It ain’t over till it’s over_.

***

In the end, Jamie didn’t even find out if Brandon had come back to sleep with him in the bedroom that night or if he hadn’t bothered at all. The next day, Jamie had an afternoon shift, so he slept in until about 10 AM, attempting to compensate for staying up most of the night. When he woke up, Brandon was already gone.

Sluggish from the exhaustion of the night, Jamie walked around the house like a ghost, going through the motions of feeding the cats, changing the litter and making himself coffee. Looking around the empty corners of the apartment, Jamie started to wonder if Brandon really needed to leave so early. Wasn’t his job supposed to be part-time, with flexible hours, largely homeworking and all? Did they really need him there, and did he have no choice but to go right after what seemed another sleepless night?

Suspicions started to creep in, outrageous, mind-numbing visions of what Brandon could be busy with right now, other than work, swirling inside Jamie’s head until it made him sick barely had he opened his eyes.

All the while, he wasn’t in the slightest aware of what he himself was doing. He was unaware that the first thing in the morning, before he even had fully come round, he was already thinking about where Brandon was and what he was up to; he was unaware that the images of Brandon throwing himself into a whirlpool of orgiastic experiences were poisoning his day hardly had it begun. 

He wasn’t aware, because it felt normal to him. It felt natural. It felt right, like the only thing to do. 

These obsessive thoughts notwithstanding, he had to clench his teeth and get on with his day, survive somehow until he could meet Brandon and perhaps clarify something, anything for once. 

All day long, sharp bouts of anxiety mixed with waves of dull, empty pain intertwined inside his mind, at times making it really difficult to stay focused on his job or his patients, as well as making it nearly impossible to remember his own basic needs such as eating, drinking or rest. But, challenging as it was, Jamie made sure to keep his mind on the work, almost to bury himself underneath it. That seemed the only way to let the hours pass without hurting anyone or himself, and stay even remotely sane. 

He returned home feeling tense and alert, much like an animal preparing to attack – or maybe rather like one headed for fierce self-defense. 

On his way back from work, he had rehearsed thoroughly what he would have to say to Brandon, and, typically, projected all sorts of answers that Brandon could give him. Some of these scenarios discouraged him, frightened even, but then he would take a deep breath, close his eyes, and envision the best way he could react to these hypothetical words or actions on Brandon’s part.

Standing there in the centre of a crowded subway train, Jamie scrupulously exercised both his imagination and eloquence, fighting skillful fantasy duels against Brandon and doing it in style. On some level he realized none of this would translate in any way to reality, as it never had; he realized he would quickly forget what he had to say and wouldn’t cope with any kind of defensiveness or evasion on Brandon’s part. 

But at least, it was nice to imagine that he could, right? It made him feel confident and in control, even if just for a second. 

When he came back to the apartment, he was greeted by a smooth, gentle jazz tune from one of Brandon’s impressive vinyl collection. 

In the living room, this time Brandon was the first to welcome him with a quiet “Hey”. To Jamie’s surprise, he wasn’t plastered to his computer screen; instead, he was ironing a pile of shirts – Jamie’s shirts at that, those very shirts that Jamie himself had been taking quite some time now to take care of, letting them hang aimlessly on the bathroom drying rack.

Indeed, if Brandon didn’t take care of clothes in that house, nobody would. 

“Hi”, Jamie replied as he cautiously entered the living room and looked around like he suspected this setting to be some kind of a trap. It was really incomprehensible, with all the hurt and apprehension that Brandon had caused the night before, that now he would simply get down and do the chores like a good housewife would. “Um… I’m sorry about these, I should have done that myself and some three weeks ago”, he gave a shy chuckle, brushing his hair back with a fidgety movement, like it had been difficult for Brandon to tell how nervous he was even without it. 

Brandon gave Jamie a brief look from above the ironing board, and then he shook his head.

“No, that’s okay.” And getting back to ironing with those swift, daft movements, he added with a light smile playing upon his lips: “You know I don’t mind it”.

That was true, Jamie did know that. He knew all about Brandon’s passionate cleanliness and how he enjoyed doing the chores the way Jamie enjoyed a good poem or a beautiful movie. And yet, lately it obviously seemed that Brandon had been having less time and need for satisfying his inner cleaning freak, too busy and too absorbed doing something else entirely. 

But right now, Jamie found it difficult to care. Brandon’s smiles were so rare these days, it felt like eternity since he had last seen one. At this moment, he was just happy to see it again and take delight in that precious sight. 

In fact, he was falling in love with it all over again, like with a favorite song he hadn’t heard in ages, like with a long-forgotten scent that brought back happy memories. 

“True”, he eventually admitted timidly, and then he looked away to the kitchen. In a highly unconvincing manner he was trying to collect his thoughts and remember what the urgent matter that he had intended to discuss with Brandon had been.

Brandon wasn’t of much help when it came to this, naturally.

“There’s dinner in the fridge, have some”, Jamie heard his soothing, encouraging voice from behind his back.

Unbeknown to Brandon, he closed his eyes and fought the tears brimming underneath his eyelids.

If he closed his eyes, it was almost like he could time travel, away from the sorrowful present into not so distant past when Brandon seemed to care, and to appreciate him, and plain happy about staying with him. 

It was amazing how a small gesture of kindness, such as cooking him dinner or ironing his shirts, could reduce Jamie to a bundle of sentiments. 

He was putty in Brandon’s beautiful, shapely hands. The ease with which Brandon made him forget all about his own anger and hurt, the way he got him feeling blessed just being at his side and sharing a part of his life was dreamy and scary all at the same time. 

In the following minutes, Jamie was thus more than a little distracted and confused by those feelings that Brandon had caused him to have. Even as they exchanged some unassuming chatter about what Brandon had cooked this time, even as he did his best to simply enjoy the delicious meal Brandon had gifted him with, he was nervous on the inside.

He knew that something was wrong. He knew that he betrayed himself, the desperate, nerve-wracked himself from the night before and that whole long day, trying to repress those harrowing memories and convince himself there was nothing to talk about. 

He had to think ahead. He had to be reasonable. He knew better. He knew that the sweet, caring Brandon was nothing but a fluttering butterfly passing by, only there for a moment until he’d inevitably be replaced by that obsessive, relentless sex addict, a stranger to Jamie as Jamie was a stranger to him. 

Finally, sitting with his usual cup of evening tea, after quite some struggling with his own panicky self that screamed _You’ll be okay, just settle for what he’s giving you right now and don’t you dare ask for more_ , Jamie braced himself, finding the courage inside to start the talk. 

“I think there’s something I need to ask you about”, he announced clumsily, stammering on every word so much Brandon had to notice something was coming up even if he had been deaf.

“Sure”, Brandon replied casually. There was so much leisure to that deep, soft voice of his – Jamie found it plain incredible.

How was Brandon able to keep his cool like that? Lying to Jamie all this time, doing all these crazy things in secret, and still showing not a trace of anxiety? 

Maybe he was so damn confident about his cover-ups that he really didn’t suspect that Jamie could expose him. Or maybe he sincerely had no idea that Jamie might have anything to say about the trouble he’d been up to. Whatever Brandon’s reasons were, Jamie simply couldn’t conceive how anyone could be capable of feigning innocence to that degree.

Confusing. Everything so confusing. That was the only word that would come to Jamie’s mind, the only description he was capable of. 

“Uh… About last night…” Damn. What was it again that he was supposed to say? He hadn’t the faintest idea. When it came to taking actual action, his mind had predictably gone blank. The beautiful, clear-cut script he had prepared for this conversation had now melted away without a trace. “Yeah, well, it’s about last night, and…” Internally, he chastised himself for breaking his own records of sounding totally dumb and pointlessly repeating himself. 

He peered at Brandon insecurely, wondering if he still was with him; he couldn’t, however, catch his eyes as Brandon spiritedly proceeded with the ironing. 

A couple of awkwardly silent seconds ensued before Jamie finally mustered enough wits and dignity to set this talk in motion.

“You were up till late again, weren’t you?” He stressed the word _again_ to let Brandon know that the ‘it-only-happened-once’ sort of excuse was not allowed this time.

Brandon gave Jamie a lukewarm glance from above the ironing board, but Jamie had done this sort of talks with him too many times not to recognize the tiny tics on Brandon’s face which signalized he was being cautious and all set for self-defense.

If pressured enough, it turned out he was human too, after all.

“Kind of”, he confirmed after a pause. “I wasn’t sleepy, and besides, I had some work to do.”

Work, was it? Of course. What else could it have been. 

Gone was the mellow feeling that these early evening moments with Brandon had inspired in Jamie this far. In a heartbeat, his body and his soul remembered all the anger and resentment he had brought into the room in the first place. 

Before Jamie knew it, he could hear the sarcastic tune that was his voice.

“Was it a kind of work that you needed to do in the bathroom?”

Putting on a very plausible flabbergasted front, Brandon put away the iron, raised his eyebrows, uttered a clueless “What?”, and then nonchalantly resumed the ironing. 

It wasn’t even a ‘what the fuck are you talking about’ kind of _what_ , but the ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you, could you please repeat what you’ve just said?’ kind. This uncooperative guilelessness only infuriated Jamie more.

Holding back and – unknown even to himself why – playing along with another one of Brandon’s pretense games, Jamie cleared his throat and looked straight into Brandon’s eyes. 

“You were in the bathroom around three AM, I saw it.” He felt he had to emphasize he had first-hand evidence or else Brandon would easily be able to dismiss him. “And, you took your laptop with you there. So, I was just wondering what kind of work you’d need to do in the bathroom, with your laptop, at three AM.”

Brandon blinked unhurriedly, as if in slow motion, somewhat showily if someone asked Jamie. The look on his face remained deeply confused and, at the same time, provocatively amused.

“I’m not sure if I follow”, he responded calmly after a brief moment of silence, while Jamie’s fists were turning white from frenzied clenching.

“Are you?”, he hissed with unwitting aggression boiling underneath the tone of his voice. “What were you doing there, huh? Why don’t you tell me?”

The amused expression on Brandon’s face had shifted into an outward smirk.

“So you’re asking me what I was doing in the bathroom? Seriously?”

Internally squirming with the on-point ridicule he had been subjected to, Jamie could feel the veins on his forehead swell, as the drumming of his blood clogged his throat until he had to struggle to as much as breathe. 

These sensations filled him up with fear. Instead of energizing and prompting into action, his anger made him feel scared. It was that empty, trapping sensation of an air-lock, like the walls were closing down on him. 

He’d thought he’d have so much to say Brandon, so much to tell him about his condition, his attitude, and the disrespectful way he liked to treat Jamie these days. And yet, there he was, his mouth silent like it had been sewn, fingers trembling from all the destructive heat he was trying to contain.

“Yes”, he answered eventually. His voice was only slightly trembling, and the slow pace at which he uttered subsequent words pointed to deliberation rather than to wavering. Yet, this aura of confidence was misleading and cost him a lot. He really had to fight his vocal chords, his tongue and his head before each of the words could come out. “And with a laptop.”

This time, Brandon amplified his reaction by snorting out loud. Was Jamie really being that ridiculous, or did Brandon just get his kicks from seeing him embarrassed and powerless like that?

Whichever it was, Brandon appeared sincerely entertained by Jamie’s claims. He showed no irritation, no defensiveness, no negative feelings, just pure hilarity. It was like he was saying, _You’re being too ridiculous to get to me_.

“What makes you think I had the laptop with me?”, he asked briefly and to the point, the blameless sneer still plastered to his face.

This shut Jamie’s mouth effectively, and made his head go full blank mode again.

Right. What exactly were his reasons? His thoroughly, diligently thought-out reasons?

Right now, it seemed like he had completely forgotten whatever they could have been. 

“Uh…” he stumbled, making himself look even sillier, if that was still possible at all. “I… it was… I mean…” Why did he suddenly make it seem like he was the one who had to explain himself to Brandon? Why did he get the feeling like he was the bad one, the deceitful one, the unreasonable one here? Looking down to avert Brandon’s scornful gaze, he carried on mumbling, investing whatever he had to make his talk possibly coherent: “I woke up, you… you were in the bathroom, and the laptop… it wasn’t there, I mean, I didn’t see it…”

“Oh.” Brandon shrugged his shoulders and resumed the ironing, his sparse body language conveying he didn’t expect anything interesting to pop up in this conversation anymore. “It was in the kitchen.”

“What?!” Jamie exclaimed automatically, positive he must have misheard something. The silence that ensued allowed him to rewind the footage in his mind and reply Brandon’s words, only to find that Brandon really had said what Jamie thought he might have.

Now that was something that hadn’t occurred to him. So Brandon had been up all night, but he had placed the laptop in the kitchen, now was it absurd or what? 

Or maybe it wasn’t? Maybe there was something that had slipped Jamie’s attention, something obvious that he and his slow wit had failed to take into consideration… maybe his own assessment of the situation wasn’t as reliable as it had seemed?

After all, he hadn’t been in the kitchen, so he couldn’t be certain Brandon was lying, could he?

He could clearly feel himself sink into the swamp of second-guessing anxiety.

Panting nervously, and then clearing his throat, Jamie attempted to elaborate:

“What do you mean, in the kitchen? What would you need your computer in the kitchen for?” He stressed the _in the kitchen_ part, implying that by contrast, if it had been _the bathroom_ , he would have a clear idea what Brandon should need his computer for there. 

Hardly even minding to look away from the ironing board, Brandon sent Jamie something of an impatient frown. It didn’t seem, however, like he was getting heated about what he must have perceived like an intrusive interrogation. It was more of a frown of vague annoyance at Jamie’s increasingly unreasonable persistence. 

“I left it there,” Brandon explained with that theatrically tired look. “I was watching things on youtube and didn’t want it to wake you up, so I moved to the kitchen.”

It wasn’t an excuse that Jamie had seen coming, but one he had a really hard time buying. Even if the very fact that Brandon did have one, a reasonably convincing one, not to mention considerate (‘I’ve only done this out of concern about your precious good night’s sleep’), had taken him by surprise. 

Maybe he just could never learn. Maybe he was destined to always have Brandon one-up him.

Still, he attempted to fight back, on this battlefield that pretended not to be one, disguised in cold politeness and restrained complaints on both parts.

“Why didn’t you just use your headphones?” Because, as Jamie was aware, Brandon the audiophile had more than just one set of headphones, each suited for different moods, occasions and music genres, and he used them extensively when out jogging, or really whenever he wanted to insulate himself. 

Brandon scoffed. Apparently he had discovered that this strategy of subtle derision disarmed Jamie much more efficiently than retreating or retaliating did. Which obviously was no good news for Jamie.

“Because they make my ears hurt.”

Now Jamie – _again_ – couldn’t argue with that. Not that it even was worth arguing. This conversation wasn’t supposed to revolve around headphones, so how on earth had it ended up like this?

“Oh. I see”, he replied sheepishly, because what else could he say to that? His subconscious was currently very busy trying to soothe him into thinking there was nothing else he could say or do to convey to Brandon exactly what he meant and put this conversation back on the intended track.

Brandon was happy to go back to his fervent ironing, finally undisturbed by Jamie’s annoying questioning. Meanwhile, Jamie withdrew into the kitchen and leant against the fridge, breathing slowly, trying to put his thoughts together. 

He was feeling like a boxer in the ring, knocked down with a few severe upper cuts and stunned, his vision blurred and the world spinning, but still not quite ready to throw in the towel.

Dazed as he was, he focused his thinking on the actions to be taken, on the things that still could be said and done. He may have been down, but not out. He wasn’t losing it so easily. All the preparation, the pain, the effort he had put too make this confrontation happen… no, it wasn’t all going to waste. 

After a while he stormed back into the living room, carried on the wings of another brilliant if desperate idea of a reply that had come upon him.

“For the record, you know, you don’t need to do this anymore. I mean, you don’t have to move out of the living room if there’s anything you’d like to do late at night.” 

In the meantime, Brandon had finished ironing that huge pile of shirts, so right now he was chilling with a beer (what else could it be?) in front of the TV set. Upon hearing Jamie coming, he gave him that uninspired _You again?_ look, before shifting his gaze back to the screen.

Had the matters been any less heated, Jamie would probably have begun to feel concerned about his own reaction – or rather the lack of it – of being ignored like that. It was like he had grown used to Brandon letting him know ever so delicately how invisible and unimportant he was.

Right now, however, things were urgent and Jamie couldn’t afford the luxury of specifically considering all the ways he reacted to Brandon’s treatment and mistreatment of him. After all, there were conversations to be concluded, matters to be settled, and souls (Brandon’s soul, to be precise) to be saved. The world couldn’t wait.

Undiscouraged, Jamie bravely continued.

“These walls are quite thick, right? I can’t think of any time I could hear anything you were doing here while I was in the bedroom. You really don’t need to worry about waking me up, I guess.”

They eyes met once more, and this time, for a few brief moments, it appeared like Brandon was present – and not in the most reassuring way. Time stood still when that happened, and the tension that had arisen would probably suffice to electrocute a whole city. 

The air was so heavy with all the things neither of them would say out loud, it seemed the room could collapse or implode any minute. 

“Well… that’s good”, responded Brandon after an unspecified time of both of them contentiously staring at each other. 

What he really had said, seemed to Jamie, was _Do you dare me to drop my guard? Are you trying to make me check if you really don’t know what’s been going on here at night? Please do make me, it’ll be fun_.

Jamie had no idea how to reply, more puzzled than he would have liked to admit in that self-woven net of deception, innuendos and second-guessing. But as if in a stupor, he proceeded with his answer nevertheless.

“So, there’s no need for you to use the headphones, much less move to the kitchen. You can just stay here in the living room and keep doing your thing for as long as you’re up.”

To an ignorant bystander it may have seemed like a needless repetition of a clear enough conclusion, but Jamie knew – and he believed that Brandon did, too – the truth behind these seemingly redundant lines.

_Unless of course you have a good reason to hide away from me, hide what you’re doing, and disappear with your laptop to make sure your cover isn’t blown_ , was the actual message underneath.

Naturally, Jamie wouldn’t know if the subtle threat built in his excessively courteous words had really impressed Brandon in any way. Brandon wouldn’t be himself if he let his guard down and his genuine self be known, even if for a split second.

Instead, he only replied in his usual, unaffected way, maintaining his poker face as he spoke another clichéd phrase. 

“That’s nice.”

It appeared like the menace of the moment was then over. The tension subsided and they both looked away from each other, as if too fatigued to carry on the silent skirmish.

Then, just as it seemed that a yet another inept attempt at confrontation on Jamie’s part would end inconclusively, Jamie had to face an unexpected counterattack. 

“Next time, if you need my laptop, you can just ask”, he heard Brandon say unassumingly, which made him dumbfounded for a second or two. 

It wasn’t just that Brandon’s words made no sense, but also that he had made them sound so obvious. It was almost like they had been cut and pasted from a different conversation and ended up then and there only by error. 

“I… I’m not sure what you mean”, Jamie finally had to admit, the confused look on his face and open hands conveying the sincerity of his bewilderment. 

That didn’t disconcert Brandon in any way. If anything, he seemed oddly confident, secure in his conviction that there were no misunderstandings here. This set off Jamie’s internal alarm of paced up heartbeat and sinking feeling in the stomach, long before the same could happen inside his head.

“Well, I figured you had a good reason if you were looking for my laptop so late at night.” The poise with which Brandon articulated those lines trembled with a hushed echo in Jamie’s ears, but it was his piercing, unforgiving gaze that had Jamie paralyzed. 

Their usual roles got reversed in an unexpected and, for Jamie, deeply disturbing manner. Now Brandon was the interrogative party and Jamie was the one interrogated, the one who had something to hide and was frantically looking for the means to accomplish it.

Because somehow it didn’t even cross his mind that he could straight up admit – yes, I was looking for your laptop, because I wanted to find out if you were watching porn, because I’m obsessed with your addiction and going crazy with suspicions what you might be doing whenever I look away. 

Instead, it seemed to him that he was the bad guy for spying on Brandon like that – that it was a shameful thing to do and under no circumstances could he own up to this kind of insanity. 

He wondered if that was the way Brandon usually felt under attack of Jamie’s questions – that _I know what you’re hiding and I’m only being nice enough to let you tell me about it yourself_ kind of questions – and if he was enjoying his sweet little revenge time.

Well, it all served Jamie right for having let down his guard in such a lame manner. He was the loser in that senseless game he had little idea how to play in the first place. 

“No… not really, nothing in particular”, he wrung from his pressured vocal chords. Avoiding Brandon’s stare, like he wanted to prevent him from seeing what Brandon had certainly found out by himself anyway, he bit his lips and closed his eyes, like a prisoner waiting for the sentence to be announced.

Would Brandon now start to ask questions?

Would Jamie become the confronted instead of the confronting party?

Would he now learn what Brandon really _thought_ and, worse, _knew_ about him – that he was a stalker? A creep? An out-of-control freak? A nothing?

The background sounds from the still-on TV formed a cluster of unintelligible noise that pounded against Jamie’s ears.

Seconds went by, however, and the sentence still wasn’t passed. When Jamie gathered the courage to look up – or perhaps when the tension had built up to the point Jamie couldn’t stand it anymore – he saw Brandon focused on the screen and his beer again, with no visible interest in carrying on with the trial any longer.

Jamie used that moment to sneak into the bedroom. He painfully felt the disgrace of his retreat at such a point and in such a manner, but still, getting to a place where he could be alone and safe was his current priority.

He grabbed his research materials and clutched his own laptop tightly, hoping that distracting himself with work would make him feel better. Yet, unsurprisingly, he had a hard time concentrating on anything that wasn’t a direct reminiscence of the events from the minutes before. 

It was so ironic how Brandon turned out to help him focus on himself rather than keep plodding through Brandon’s issues. It might have been even perceived as an act of kindness, had it not made Jamie feel like nothing, and had it not been intended – which Jamie assumed it was – to make him feel so.

True, self-esteem had never been Jamie’s forte, and since Brandon moved in, it hadn’t exactly been on the rise, either. But right now it had just received a direct, organic blow.

Maybe Brandon was right in all that he implied, in all the derision and scathing he had left unsaid only to make it more impactful. Maybe Jamie was the one in the wrong here. Maybe Jamie was the lunatic here. 

Maybe he had no right to try and fix Brandon when it was him who was the ugly one. 

A dozen or two of minutes of frantic consideration later, and Jamie suddenly came up with a conclusion that brought him instant relief, even if it put him on the defeated side. 

He had to let Brandon be and do his thing, he decided. He had no right to interfere. Who was he to judge what was right or wrong for Brandon? Who was he to demand anything of him? Who was he to be trying to mold him into acting the way he saw fit?

Brandon’s choices were Brandon’s alone. Jamie could either accept them or give it all up. There was no middle ground.

And, obviously, he had to go with the ‘accept’ option. Not that it was even an option in the first place. 

Having arrived at this resolution, Jamie put away his work stuff and curled up in bed, feeling increasingly tired and drained, which was no strange thing to him these days. 

Feeling heavy with the emotion and thinking overdose, he wished now for just one thing – to fall asleep into oblivion. 

And then maybe to wake up energized, rejuvenated, and remembering nothing.

***

For a couple of days that followed that unfortunate would-be raid on Brandon’s illicit actions, Jamie slowed things down. Or maybe it was things that slowed him down. He was now disconcerted every time he looked in the mirror, disheartened by the glimpse of self-reality that he got thanks to Brandon’s skillful tactics, by the vision of himself as the villain, the stalker, the weirdo. If Brandon had planned for this to keep Jamie away and make him believe that he was the problem instead, he succeeded masterfully.

So Jamie decided for a change to get a grip on his own embarrassing behavior and fix himself. In his ever-growing library on sex addiction there were dozens of chapters and hundreds of pages on codependency, and while he could earnestly relate to some of the descriptions and personality profiles, he never considered codependency to be a genuine issue for him. It didn’t sound familiar, it didn’t seem like it concerned him. Besides, wasn’t codependency a matter concerning spouses or long-term partners, or families? While he and Brandon… well, they sort of had had a kind of relationship, or an attempt on one, and now it didn’t seem like even this was the case. In short, how could he be codependent to someone who more often than not treated him like a stranger?

But now Jamie had come to reconsider the matter and begun to think that this whole codependency thing might have sadly rung true. Maybe that was the reason everything he tried would fail. He was being self-righteous and judgmental, focusing on Brandon and not on his own issues. He had to let go now, let Brandon be, and deal with his own madness instead.

At least, he told himself, that was the right thing to do – the loving thing to do.

So he did let Brandon be, and did his best to focus on something else entirely, be it work, or research, or his books, or his pets. He even went to the gym once or twice, an activity he had mostly discarded since Jessie left him, because who should he be looking good and keeping himself fit for? (As for Brandon, naturally, it wasn’t like he cared at all about the way Jamie looked or any other aspect of his physicality, so Brandon clearly wasn’t an answer, either.)

Anyway, Jamie tried really hard not to think about what Brandon was doing with his computer or what images and sceneries kept Brandon hypnotized day in, day out. And, to a degree, this approach worked. And more than just that, it resulted in what seemed an immediate improvement of the atmosphere inside the apartment and the quality of their relationship. Brandon apparently knew he wasn’t being spied on anymore, and the realization that every single one of his steps wasn’t monitored and scrutinized now must have helped him relax.

Feeling more at ease with Jamie’s presence and more at home in the apartment, Brandon was once again quite agreeable and at times even fun to be around. All this change happened within the course of barely a few days; Jamie could see that this ‘letting go’ or ‘detachment’ method from codependence workbooks really worked miracles. 

This, in turn, warmed him back to Brandon, and rekindled his enthusiasm in thinking about the upcoming September 11. 

It was quite an irony that he should feel any zest about this specific day, the single most tragic point in the calendar for so many of his fellow Americans. Brandon himself, too, once stated that this kind of not so fortunate coincidences had been the story of his life, which was why, he claimed, he hadn’t even been so surprised that the Al-Qaida picked his birthday as the day to conduct the attacks. 

Anyway, back in the early summer Jamie had liked to fantasize about that special day, about how they would celebrate it together, him showing Brandon all of his loving appreciation and his genuine joy about the fact that Brandon was there in his world. But then things started to fall apart and Jamie found himself not thinking about September 11 so eagerly anymore – and if he did think about it, it was always a mixture of discouragement and resentment.

Now things had begun to shift yet again, and Jamie was happy to be shyly but steadily returning to the zealous mode. In no time, once again his head was full with plans and ideas of how to make that day exceptional and how to honor Brandon’s precious presence in his life.

He was very excited – a little anxious, too – about picking a birthday gift for Brandon, something stylish and worthy of that gorgeous man. Obviously Jamie didn’t have so much confidence in his ability to choose something that would match Brandon’s refined and particular taste. So, as much as he would be overjoyed to buy for Brandon some piece of clothing of his own choice, a shirt, a tie or a scarf maybe (Brandon was a scarf lover after all, becoming an epitome of urbane look whenever wearing one and looking organically handsome), and to see his visions of Brandon wearing something he himself had found classy come to life, he soon realized he lacked the courage to try.

Because seriously, who was he to buy Brandon clothes? Brandon was an expert homemade stylist that would put many a professional to shame, and Jamie was, well, Jamie – down to earth, locked up inside his head, showing moderate interest at best in the matters of image and fashion, essentially a country bumpkin at worst.

He didn’t want to make Brandon snort in despise, even if just internally, upon seeing Jamie’s precious, carefully selected gift. Or to smile politely, then shove the thing ro the bottom of the closet and never look at it again, possibly wondering why on earth Jamie bothered to get him some sorry item with an estimated price tag of a thing Brandon wouldn’t consider purchasing even from a bargain bin (not that Brandon seemed to be the kind of person who cared about bargain bins at all, or even realize their existence on most days – he definitely was out of Jamie’s league in this respect). It wasn’t like Jamie was intending to go with the economy mode buying his gift for Brandon, but he was acutely aware that the range of what he could pay for clothes and still consider it reasonable probably didn’t even reach Brandon’s outlet levels.

And when it came to clothes and fashion, either or both these expected reactions would necessarily happen. In this category there was nothing Jamie could get Brandon that would be of any interest to him and that would be remotely deserving of him. Why should Jamie expose himself to such disappointment, then? This whole thing mattered to him too much. It was simply wiser to play it safe. 

Thus, still wanting to present Brandon with something chic while remaining outside the direct realm of fashion, Jamie revolved his possible choices inside his head until he narrowed them down to just three options: a wallet, a laptop case or a fragrance. All three had made the shortlist because of their ability to serve both aesthetic and practical purposes; the final pick was now a matter of comparing and contrasting the details.

Two first, ultimately, were deemed by Jamie as a bit too practical, not necessarily evocative of the most desirable associations. A wallet might have been received as a subliminal expression of Jamie’s interest in, or possibly – in Brandon’s mind – prying into Brandon’s finances, an _I’ve got you the container and now you take care of the contents for a change_ kind of message that was, needless to say, quite the opposite of what Jamie really intended to say with his present. 

A laptop case would be even worse. Not only would it be coldly work-oriented, it would also be a constant reminder to Jamie of all the extra-curricular after-hours things that Brandon used his computer for. Consequently, instead of feeling glad and proud about Brandon putting a present from Jamie to a good use, Jamie would be inevitably left frustrated and bitter each time he looked at his own gift.

Try as he might to convince himself that he was alright now with those laptop activities on Brandon’s part, that he had put his obsession in check, Jamie was still sober enough to realize there was no way he would get over this so easily; no way he would come to terms with the fact that he had lost Brandon’s affection to that extravagant delusional sex life of his just like that. 

Fragrance it was, then.

Now didn’t it open a vast sea of possibilities before Jamie, one that he could easily drown into if he got in too deep, but the depths of which were too enticing not to take a full-on dive.

First he submerged himself in a methodical research, broadening his knowledge of perfumes and gathering the data like he was preparing for a conference presentation and not for buying a personal present. 

Of course, he could have simply gone along with his intuition and tastes, not giving the process too much thought. He could have gone to the first nice perfumery on his way back from work, try a couple of scents, pick the one that he liked and considered most suitable for Brandon, and that would have been all to the story – in short, he could have gone the route he usually applied to himself (if at all, because for the last three years Jamie had mostly been in a hiding when it came to expressing his masculinity and physical appeal, deeming everything above the level of an aftershave an expendable luxury that would be wasted on him). 

The thing was, this gift was supposed to be _special_. The receiver was _special_ , too, and so was the occasion – his first birthday spent with Jamie. 

It was Jamie’s job now to convince Brandon – and, as he himself subliminally perceived, himself too – that he knew what _special_ was and was an expert in appropriate handling of _special_.

In the process, he had thoroughly and conveniently forgotten what Brandon’s own attitude toward _special_ was – how repulsed he once had been to have been called special, insisting that all that he wanted was to be _normal_ instead. 

Thus, intoxicated by his inner specialness cult like it was some kind of enslaving aroma itself, Jamie immersed himself in a study of online materials on scents and perfume brands. When he narrowed down his imaginable choices to less than ten items, he took the list with him and began his drugstore tour. 

He carefully tested each of the shortlisted fragrances, going as far as to sign the tester strips, so as not to confuse which scent belonged to which fragrance, and taking them home to check how the scent had changed over the next few hours. He took his time trying too imagine how the specific scents would smell on Brandon and whether they would befit him. These visions were thrilling and often glamorous, yet each was necessarily peppered with an unspoken, barely conscious pinch of melancholy, of a yearning unfulfilled. 

It wasn’t exactly grounded of Jamie to get all dreamy about Brandon wearing any of these fragrances when Brandon had locked his physicality and sensuality away from him. It was almost like Jamie wanted to torture himself by creating something enthralling only to put it away in a glass safe to look at and admire, but never to touch. 

Still, as much as he dreaded the thought that Brandon had eluded him for good, a part of him believed that he had the ability to break that glass, or make it shatter. He almost treated it as a challenge to see if he could make Brandon his own like that. 

At the pinnacle of his careful experiential search backed up by a masterful analysis of the market, Jamie resolved he would go for a gift set from a fancy brand, which apart from eau de cologne included aftershave and shower gel. The scent was incredible, as expected from the attentiveness it had been chosen with. It seemed to have been composed from sheer contradictions: it was subtle, yet very masculine, cool and dignified, and yet seductive and enticing. With notes of both vanilla and pepper, it was sweet and spicy all at the same time. 

Hardly ever had Jamie been so sure of his choices as he was right now. If this scent could take a human shape, it would be the shape of Brandon.

When Jamie bought the gift set and brought it home (hiding it away from Brandon at the back of a shelf in the very same place where he kept his secret sex addiction and sexual abuse reading stash), he had to fight the urge to open the box and spray himself all over with these droplets of delight. It would certainly catapult him into a sensual world of fantasy and temptation where there was just Brandon and him, nothing in between, just pure heated passion with no reality to drag them down. 

He held himself back, nonetheless, and even though it came with a struggle, his own silly impatience also amused him. 

Hastiness wasn’t the way to go. He knew that if he did it right, he could make his most precious fantasies reality.

Maybe Brandon’s birthday, with all the careful planning, thought and heart that Jamie was putting into it, would mark a turning point for them, confirming what Jamie should have known – and in his heart of hearts, really _had_ known – all along: that gentleness, adoration and love were that much more effective in winning someone over than complaints, demands and control.

He was quite certain of his reasoning. _If I get this right, I might get Brandon back._

He hadn’t given it that much thought as to what exactly ‘getting Brandon back’ was supposed to mean. He simply went with his intuitions, with his feeling, and those were very clear: the elaborate and romantic birthday evening would get Brandon into bed with him, they would spend a sweet and steamy night, and that would finally make Brandon see that all that he craved, all that he needed, all that he was looking for was right there, with and within Jamie. 

These visions had signaled the end of the brief days of Jamie the whining bundle of insecurity and self-loathing. Instead, Jamie the achiever, Jamie the go-getter, Jamie the troubleshooter was back – and, as he himself preferred to believe, back for good.

As for the specific content of the evening, Jamie assumed it would be wiser to discuss it with Brandon beforehand rather than make all the decisions by himself. As much as his visions of creating the perfect surprise evening and effortlessly making all of Brandon’s unexpressed wishes come true pleasantly massaged Jamie’s ego, he still had enough of a grip on reality to know better. Brandon wasn’t the most predictable of all people, so it was safest to directly ask him what he would like instead of making questionable assumptions.

Not to mention that it was supposed to be Brandon’s evening, Brandon’s celebration, so it was Brandon that was meant to be the most influential person here. 

Jamie made his attempt to discuss the plan with Brandon on a Monday evening, six days before the birthday. 

At the time, Brandon was being busy in the kitchen preparing another one of his fine-tuned, time-consuming healthy dinner salads. While engaged in his self-imposed kitchen chores, he wasn’t distracted by all those apparently captivating things that usually kept him plastered to his computer screen, so Jamie figured it would be an appropriate time to get him to talk. 

Jamie approached Brandon’s side cautiously, standing next to him by the countertop, before he asked, trying to make it sound as casually as possible:

“So, have you thought about what you’d like to do on your birthday?”

Busy chopping that green leafy something the name of which Jamie never bothered to remember but naturally was superbly nourishing and low on calories, Brandon didn’t slow his swift hand movements even for a second as he replied with a distinctly unconcerned tone:

“No, not really. Nothing in particular, I guess”. 

For Brandon, it was quite an elaborate answer. It even gave an impression like he actually might have wanted to engage in a conversation about this topic. Jamie, naturally, took it as a good omen. 

“How about an evening out, then?”, he proceeded with his suggestions. 

This time, Brandon did stop his hand for a brief moment, and it appeared like he had flinched. It lasted so short it might as well been an illusion, however, and besides, under these circumstances flinching would make no sense.

“Sure, why not”, he replied as he resumed his meal preparations. His attitude didn’t scream enthusiasm and his face remained expressionless, but since when did Brandon show any enthusiasm, or his expressions were any revealing? Apart from the certain matters which meant to Brandon an unhealthy lot and which Jamie refused to ponder – not now, not that he was in his hopeful action mode. 

“Alright, so would you like to see a movie? Of course, this time you get to decide what we’re going to see.” He smiled unassumingly, imagining Brandon rolling his eyes at prospects of sitting through another romantic comedy or serious, socially conscious drama of Jamie’s choice. 

“Yeah, sounds about fine”, responded Brandon as he solemnly transferred the freshly prepared ingredients from the chopping board to a pot. 

Reflexively, Jamie was confused as to whether that reaction was meant as a half-hearted attempt to dump him, but eventually he decided to take Brandon’s words at face value. It was Brandon, after all. Brandon wasted no words. If he said ‘fine’, he likely didn’t mean it as ‘not really’. 

“Great, so please pick a movie and time that you like, and choose the place you like, too.” He radiated a broader smile and brushed his chocolate brown hair back with pale white fingers, in a little disbelief at how smoothly things seemed to be going, but not complaining about that outcome in the slightest. 

Because really, wasn’t that obvious, and at the same time, ingenuous in its simplicity of the common sense? Here he was coming to that conclusion again: cutting down on accusations, allegations and surveillance was enough to make Brandon that much more cooperative. It may have gone against the grain, but apparently that was the way things worked: to loosen your grip on the situation was really the only way to tighten it. 

“I will”, confirmed Brandon in that formalistic manner of his, which made Jamie smile yet again and still wider as he remembered how he really adored those little quirks in Brandon’s behavior: his taciturn ways, his superficial aloofness that could be mistaken for inapproachability if you got discouraged too easily.

“And then…” Jamie carried on with his tempting (or at least intended as such) display of offers and ideas, increasingly excited and quite positive that the appeal of the invitation was gradually taking Brandon over, too – “then we could have a fancy meal out, what do you say?”

Brandon gave Jamie a quick, lackluster glance before he moved to the fridge to get some more ingredients and immersed himself yet again in the cooking. “Uh-huh”, he muttered along the way, sounding less than convinced or interested, but Jamie could swear he saw him flash that smug, endearing half-smile of his. 

“It’ll be my treat, needless to say”, Jamie added on, feeling and acting as bubbly as a teenager asking his date out for the first time – and in a way, this situation did have that first time feel to it. “As much as I’d like to be able to fix a nice dinner for you myself, I kind of don’t have the confidence in my kitchen skills”, he chuckled, certain that Brandon must have found it just as amusing, because they both knew that Jamie wasn’t a born cook and how his abilities paled in comparison to Brandon’s. “And I really don’t want to blow your special day, so I think it’d be best to leave it to professionals.” 

As Jamie finished this part of his chatter, Brandon suspended all of his motion, becoming virtually petrified over the steaming cloud of stove. His face, which Jamie could see from the profile, wasn’t merely expressionless anymore – it had turned into a hollow stone mask, resembling human face in nothing but its shape. 

This time it did startle Jamie, making him anxious if everything was alright. Was Brandon upset now? Was it something Jamie had said? But what could this be about? This time around it wasn’t like Jamie was pressing Brandon about anything, or criticizing, or attacking, or stalking. They were talking about celebrating Brandon’s birthday, for chrissake! What could possibly be so disturbing about it? 

It all lasted barely seconds, however, and no sooner had the wheels inside Jamie’s head begun to turn that Brandon relaxed into his normal state, resuming his activities and acting like everything was in order. This sufficed to make Jamie exhale in relief. He must have been just imagining things again, after all. And with all the turmoil he’d faced with Brandon over the last couple of weeks, it made sense if he was being a little oversensitive to Brandon’s actual or perceived reactions.

Thus reassured, Jamie continued: “It’d be great if you made your pick here, too. Maybe you could give me a particular restaurant you’d like to go? Or at least tell me what cuisine you feel like?”

Brandon waved his beautiful, slender hand in a gesture that indicated indifference, but still for Brandon’s standards was rather energetic. “No, that’s fine, I mean… I think I’ll just leave this to you.”

Jamie gave Brandon a disbelieving look that was meant to tell he found Brandon’s proposal no less than outrageous. 

“But… but it’s your _birthday_!”, he stressed like Brandon had committed some kind of blasphemy. “You can’t leave decisions to others on your birthday! It’s supposed to be _your_ day and everything is supposed to revolve around _you_ , you know?” He felt an uncomfortable pressure in his throat upon hearing his own words. They made him remember that Brandon most definitely hadn’t come from a regular, functional household. Chances were that he may have had little idea as to what birthday celebrations were about, and that unlike Jamie, Brandon’s birthdays may not have been his happiest memories. 

Upon this realization, Jamie winced internally at his own ignorant insensitivity, but at the same time, extra determined to make it all up to Brandon, giving him the perfect birthday he may have never had. “So, I insist”, he continued with gusto. “Italian? Thai? Mexican? Whatever’s your fancy is your call.” 

He grinned and narrowed his eyes, moving his upper body closer to Brandon as he placed his hand on Brandon’s shoulders in an encouraging pat. 

When Brandon looked back into Jamie’s face, his eyes seemed strangely absent-minded. Because of that, Jamie was sure that Brandon hadn’t heard his last words, and just as he was about to repeat the line, Brandon responded with another complacent:

“Alright, I’ll think about it”.

Jamie flashed his gleaming white teeth in a yet another chuckle, happy about Brandon’s answer. Because _alright_ was undoubtedly an affirmative – it meant _yes_ , it meant _I’ll go along_ , it meant _we can make it happen_.

“Please do”, he agreed, spontaneously wrapping his arm around Brandon’s waist to give him a light hug, flashes of tenderness sparkling in his blood and all over his body. 

Jamie definitely did. While it certainly wasn’t the most demonstrative or the most obvious way of showing your connectedness to someone, it was most definitely Brandon’s way. And as such, it was just as valid – and all the more touching. 

“Here, let me do something useful once in a while”, he proceeded with a resolute offer as he snatched the blender Brandon was just about to use. Brandon looked surprised, but he didn’t object. And justly so, because in that frame of mind, Jamie wouldn’t take no for an answer. 

His mind was full of initiative and eagerness. Everything was going just right, and he couldn’t remember when he had last felt so fine and so trusting in what was about to come.

Thinking about organizing Brandon’s birthday, he started off by considering what he could gain from it, how he could maybe make Brandon accept him and appreciate their togetherness once more. But this conversation with Brandon right now made him graduate from that kind of self-centeredness. He recalled how ailing Brandon really was on the inside, how insecure and doubting in himself he could be. It was Jamie’s duty to share with Brandon, to give him the best that he had – to make Brandon see that he deserved the best and that, indeed, the best would exactly be what he’d get if they stuck together.

And if only he could make this scared, timid little kid buried deep beneath Brandon’s detached exterior believe in and love himself more, even if just a little – then it would make Jamie himself feel fulfilled and blessed as ever. 

For once everything seemed bright in the foreseeable future. So bright, actually, it should have been at least a little scary – but Jamie was too much of a hope zealot to care.

***

After what seemed to Jamie like years of anxious waiting mixed with uncontainable excitement, The Day had finally arrived. While the more down-to-earth, realistic side of Jamie was aware that with the self-imposed expectations of perfection and the grandiose aim to charm and wow Brandon he was only putting himself under unnecessary pressure, he couldn’t help it. 

He couldn’t help intricately planning out every detail of their evening, he couldn’t help striving for everything to turn out splendid, and he also couldn’t help hoping this would be the night that would define the rest of their lives. 

Swept away in such a manner by the tornado of agitation, Jamie couldn’t fail to notice Brandon’s incessant indifference toward The Day. It remained in stark contrast with the heat and buzz experienced by Jamie, to the effect that Jamie really was forced to care and take charge of the schedule and its content all on his own. Brandon acted like all this commotion was none of his business, and in his ‘do what you like’ and ‘I’ll go along with anything you suggest’ attitude there was something undeniably evasive, dismissive even.

As soon as such impressions arrived at Jamie’s awareness, inducing discomfort and apprehension whether the celebration was going to work and if it really was such a good idea, Jamie skillfully fought them off with a million grounded, opinionated rationales. 

Of course Brandon wasn’t at ease with all this – he wasn’t used to being the centre of attention or the focus of someone’s heartfelt efforts. 

Of course Brandon couldn’t care less about his own birthday – why should he if he couldn’t care less about his own self, his own existence to begin with? With his traumatic background and all the tragedies he had faced that Jamie could only make shaky guesses about, it was likely that there were more days on which Brandon wished he hadn’t been born than those on which he truly felt his life was a gift to himself and to the world that deserved be honored. 

It was precisely the reason why Jamie was doing all this, why he was giving it his best shot, and why he was trying so hard to make it amazing, magnificent, and just right. He wanted to make Brandon see how wonderful he were, and that with him in it, the world was a better place; just for this one day, he really wanted Brandon to see himself with Jamie’s eyes. 

Thus, although Brandon’s outward disregard of their birthday plans would most definitely upset Jamie if he let it, he refused to allow this to happen. Nothing discouraged him. When he realized that open questions (‘what would you like?’) didn’t work, he switched into the yes-no mode (‘will this be okay?’). Surprisingly and quite reassuringly, not all of Brandon’s answers were a yes, which indicated that he wasn’t _that_ indifferent, after all – that there were at least _some_ things that he preferred to others.

Consequently, they decided – or rather, Jamie elicited from Brandon a sort of decision, to be precise – they wouldn’t choose a movie in advance, but instead just go to the theatre and spontaneously decide on the spot what they would see. It sounded like Brandon alright: for all of his obsessive, controlling habits, he also had that large impromptu side to him. He seemed to gladly go along with his impulses rather than stick to the agenda, sometimes even giving an impression that preparation ahead killed much of the fun for him. Jamie couldn’t exactly identify with this drive for improvisation, but if that was what pleased Brandon, then it didn’t hurt Jamie, either. 

Regarding the restaurant after the movie, it appeared to Jamie that here, too, Brandon would likely be as happy to make the decision on the spot. This time, however, Jamie’s pragmatism wouldn’t have it. It would be Sunday evening, after all, so if they opted for a popular, high-profile place renowned for its cuisine, in all likelihood there would be no table for them without a prior reservation. Reluctantly agreeing with this reasoning, Brandon let Jamie book a table at a restaurant they had once tried and both liked back in July. It was an Indian restaurant with a large offer of spicy food which Jamie knew Brandon enjoyed, so it seemed like an appropriate choice. 

There were also other things that Jamie had prepared, surprise additions that would surely make it all even better and more meaningful. 

A new bath oil, just in case. And at this point, Jamie was already sure that this case would indeed be, because what other effect could there be of him going through all this trouble to make this evening flawless? He might not have been that certain about Brandon wanting to go to bed with him, but a bath, at least, he deserved. 

A birthday card. Stylish and beautiful, it again had taken hours to choose, but it was worth it with the exquisite arrangement of grayscale symbols of good fortune and hope: four-leaf clovers, horseshoes and sunflowers. 

Inside the card, Jamie had written a header quoting the lyrics of his beloved song by Richie Sambora that reminded him of Brandon and their relationship a lot. 

_See my life going by each moment I’m alive_  
I keep reaching out, holding on  
Hoping somewhere in my life there’s one light burning  
I feel it like my heart beating inside  
Somewhere in the night there’s one light burning 

Jamie perceived these lines as movingly honest. They reflected what he himself deeply believed: that even in the darkest times there was a way out, a faint glimmer that would eventually lead you back to yourself and who you were meant to be if only you trusted it enough and had faith in it. 

Jamie had been in such a dark, despondent place many times, most recently after Jessie abandoned him. And he found a way out thanks to Brandon. Brandon showed up in his life and showed him it wasn’t over yet. He had become the hope that kept Jamie dreaming and believing. 

Although lately things had been rough, Jamie still owed Brandon all the gratitude for that, for basically saving his life. And he wanted to let Brandon know that. 

Even more importantly, however, he wanted Brandon to know that this glimmer was there in his life too, a faraway northern star shining on his way out of the raging stormy seas of his anguish, his addiction, his past. 

In his heart of hearts, unbeknown even to himself, Jamie yearned for Brandon to recognize that northern star in him, shyly yet passionately. 

Below the lyrics, Jamie had recorded his carefully thought-out wishes, making them as personal and heartfelt as he could while still keeping the concision required from a birthday card. 

And – that still wasn’t all. There was even more to come. The ultimate, extra-special, hyper-personal part of what Jamie intended to give to Brandon that Sunday: a poem. 

A poem that Jamie had written himself. An intimate confession that contained Jamie’s thoughts, emotions and hopes tied to Brandon. A raw piece of Jamie, essentially. Something he wanted Brandon and Brandon alone to have, because in Jamie’s life Brandon was so exceptional and he deserved to know it all.

The poem thing admittedly made Jamie very nervous. He hadn’t written anything since the self-therapeutic output he used to create in the aftermath of his split with Jessie, and it had been even longer since he showed anything he wrote to anyone. And as for dedicated poetry, he… well, he didn’t even want to devote much thought to remember when exactly was the last time he had done that. 

Anyway, the point was, Jamie feared that with those years without practice he may have grown rusty – not that he considered himself a skillful and original writer in the first place. He had been a typical, so to say, pigeonholing writer, and his poems, which mostly reflected petty subjective things from Jamie’s life such as his perceptions and experiences, were usually for his eyes only. He didn’t like to share what he had created. These things were too intimate and mattered to him too much, so risking rejection or ridicule wasn’t an option. With little practice and even less feedback over the last couple of years, then, he had roughly zero confidence that the outcome would be any good, not to say worthy of Brandon. And all these concerns didn’t even start to take into account how Brandon didn’t seem to like or appreciate poetry as such at all, and how Jamie’s efforts to get Brandon interested in the works of his favorite authors had miserably failed.

But for Brandon, for the sake of his birthday, for the sake of their relationship, Jamie was willing to risk, to place this bet just once again. He was feeling ready to become vulnerable and expose himself this once more, revealing his inner world to Brandon in a manner as intimate as it could get. 

In fact, he was pretty confident that this time was different and things _would_ work out.

Also, writing this birthday piece reminded him how he really enjoyed expressing himself through the written word and that creating poetry, as opposed to just appreciating, was an important experience to him, one through which he was able to find his own voice, sort out his feelings, build something new from the ashes of the blazing emotions that so often resided beneath his quiet, composed demeanor. 

He already was grateful to Brandon for reminding him about all this, even if Brandon had done that only indirectly and accidentally. It was like Brandon had unknowingly returned to Jamie a long lost and forgotten piece of himself. 

And it wasn’t even the first piece of Jamie that Brandon returned to him without even trying. 

Brandon was making Jamie whole again. That was the simple, unquestionable truth. That was one of the reasons why Jamie kept falling deeper and deeper into Brandon, all the hardships notwithstanding – and why he fought so hard not to let him go. 

Jamie had thus a whole lot on his plate prepared for Brandon’s birthday, a king’s share of profuse offerings. And he was deeply impatient to give it all to him, to witness his reactions, perhaps featuring some signs of being moved and amazed at this generous display of how loved and cared for and welcome in Jamie’s world he was. Jamie was secretly hoping that for a brief moment maybe he could even see the expressionless mask on Brandon’s face melt into a warm smile or a wince of healing pain. 

So, on the Sunday morning Jamie was as perky and restless as a child on the Christmas Day. It wasn’t diminished by the fact that Brandon, as had been his firm habit for these last few weeks, apparently slept on the couch again. Jamie had no reasons to be dispirited when he knew he had done all that he could to make The Day work. He also knew exactly why he was being so much more enthusiastic about this special day than Brandon, and why he had so much more confidence in that it would be magical, special indeed. 

It was okay if Brandon appeared indifferent, cold even. He simply had no idea what was coming up. He didn’t realize yet how much this Sunday would change in his life, or in the way he viewed himself… or Jamie. And Jamie had come to think it was even better that way if Brandon was to remain ignorant. The bigger the surprise, the greater the impact. 

Consequently, Jamie decided not to rush anything, letting his intricate plan unfold in a slow, sizzling buildup. 

First thing in the morning, as soon as Brandon finally emerged from the bathroom (and Jamie was being exuberant enough to persistently wait for him in the living room, and lenient enough not to be bothered by how long Brandon was staying there, or plagued by the visions of what exactly Brandon was doing there right then of all days), Jamie approached him with a grin and a hug.

“Happy birthday, Brandon”, he murmured softly as he planted a tiny kiss on Brandon’s cheek an inch or two away from his earlobe, shyly yet lovingly. “I do hope you’ll be happy today. Like really happy, on cloud nine happy, you know what I mean?” 

He chuckled, his arms still wrapped around Brandon’s shoulders, when Brandon produced a random “Uh-huh” which clearly showed that in fact he had no idea what Jamie meant. 

Not that it mattered to Jamie. Brandon’s cluelessness might usually have been a real pain, but on moments like these it seemed to Jamie like the sweetest thing in the world. 

Then, putting on a more serious expression, a determined gleam in his azure-colored eyes, Jamie looked straight into Brandon’s face, squeezing Brandon’s shoulder with pressure that was both gentle and reassuring.

“You’re worth it, do you even know that? I…” He hesitated as to what exactly he wanted to express right now – he had so much to say within such limited time, it felt like a real curse that human speech had to be linear! – and then, looking into Brandon’s jaded, tired eyes, hiding all this sorrow and self-doubt beneath the placid surface, the right words came to him naturally, all on their own. “I think you’re wonderful, you’re a wonder. Please remember that.”

Brandon responded with an uneasy, possibly bashful, laughter.

“Yeah, right”, he smirked and awkwardly patted Jamie on the shoulder – Jamie assumed that this was Brandon’s approximation of a friendly ‘thank you’ gesture. 

On the spur of the moment Jamie wanted to proceed to apologize to Brandon for the way he had treated him before during the last couple of weeks, invading Brandon’s privacy, judging him, and possibly making him believe the very opposite of the things Jamie was trying to convince him of right now. He missed the right moment to do this, however, and so before he knew it, Brandon had escaped his embrace and seated himself at that bothersome laptop of his, something he must have been looking forward ever since he got up…or exited the bathroom, at the latest. 

Oh well, didn’t they say that habit was second nature?, concluded Jamie as he consciously decided not to be aggravated by Brandon escaping him for the sake of his addictive predilections. It wasn’t a day to be upset or to get angry with Brandon. It wasn’t a day to feel self-righteous and sorry for yourself. It was the day to celebrate and be grateful, and Jamie had made a commitment to do just that for a day. 

Soon they had a cozy little breakfast, which Jamie insisted he would be the one to prepare. Brandon didn’t respond with much eagerness about the prospect, which was a predictable reaction. He usually skipped his breakfast altogether, which was a huge reason of concern for Jamie and fitted nicely with the overall picture of Brandon’s unspecified, deprivation-heavy eating disorder. 

Still, Jamie had known better than that, and his refined arrangements for Brandon’s birthday couldn’t have missed a point in schedule as important as breakfast. He had bought supplies of ingredients that he thought would meet Brandon’s choosy approval: organically farmed fruits, whole wheat bread, low-fat 100% peanut butter (which they had tried before and was admittedly delicious, even Jamie with his skepticism towards all this healthy food craze had to agree about that), lactose-free milk – in short, all Jamie could imagine as a light, nutritious meal, perfectly suited to start a day even by Brandon’s outrageously high standards. 

As this was a day unlike all the others, Jamie decided to change the way he normally behaved, too. While on most days he let Brandon’s self-starving morning patterns slide, this time he was relentless, not taking no for an answer. What better occasion to nurture Brandon and teach him how to be good to himself than on his birthday? 

Thus, basically ignoring Brandon’s obvious ‘not hungry’ declarations, Jamie prepared the breakfast, arranged their kitchen table and decorated it with vase flowers he had, again, bought specifically for The Day, and then he dragged there a remarkably reluctant Brandon, all the while beaming with pride at what he had so far attained that morning. 

It was okay if Brandon didn’t show much appreciation for Jamie’s efforts. The fact was that he actually seemed pretty irritable, reaching deeper into his repertoire of gasps and eye-rolls to let Jamie know he had gone overboard with the lavish attention he was offering to Brandon so tenaciously and in such a focused manner. Again, these much expected defenses didn’t bring Jamie down; he was just doing his thing and hoping Brandon would catch up sooner or later.

As if to confirm the grounds for Jamie’s faith, Brandon eventually broke through his unwillingness in order to comment, a pint of surprise echoing in his deep calm voice, how Jamie remembered his preferred brand of peanut butter. Upon hearing these words, Jamie could literally feel his soul glow and rise, lifting him up all the way to the ceiling.

So that was what it felt like to make Brandon happy, or to bring him joy, or really do anything right for him. That was what it felt like to witness how astonished Brandon was at the discovery that someone could be kind to him, notice him, look after him. 

It was such a long forgotten feeling that Jamie swore now he’d learn this time to appreciate it properly and never, ever take it for granted. 

Of course, the amounts of what Brandon had actually eaten were but symbolic, but that was beside the point. It wasn’t Jamie’s intention to force-feed him, after all. It was all about showing that he cared, and showing Brandon that he, too, should take care of himself and treat his own body right. As well as, no less importantly, spending some quality leisure time together, sharing a few fine moments by good food and aromatic coffee. To this degree, Jamie had confidence he had accomplished the task properly. 

If only Brandon would see that from now on, every morning they shared under Jamie’s roof could be like that.

After breakfast, Jamie thought it would be wisest to give Brandon some of that space he craved so much, and left him alone for a couple of hours. He realized that with all his intimacy issues and everything, Brandon had had it sufficiently hard being lavished with Jamie’s love like that. He absolutely needed to recover and regroup his inner resources before the main event. 

For a while Jamie considered giving Brandon his birthday set before noon. He was more than looking forward to seeing Brandon unwrap the ribbons, open the packages and boxes, and respond to the precious content. On some moments Jamie was getting so zealous about it he felt compelled to grab the packages and shove them casually into Brandon’s hands just to finally get it over with. The tension of the unsure was sweet, but still heavy nonetheless.

The voice of reason would reliably put the brakes on these impulses on Jamie’s part, helping him remember that they still had a whole day ahead of them and it would be appropriate to save the best for last. There was no use splitting the gifts into parts either, as Jamie found it purposeful to hand the card and the poem as a single set with the fragrances. And in order to present something as intimate and meaningful as his birthday messages to Brandon he needed the perfect mood and all the luxuries in the book: the candlelight, the gourmet meal, the prospect of sweet-smelling bath with massage oils and more. Patience was a virtue indeed.

Just to make sure, and to guarantee that Brandon had all the options at his disposal, Jamie did drop a question if Brandon would prefer to receive his gifts right then or in the evening. Unsurprisingly, plastered to the desk and not even caring to look up from his computer screen, Brandon replied with a conclusive “Evening sounds good”.

He didn’t need to say that twice. Jamie made an approving internal note how they were of one mind regarding this matter, while out loud he confirmed he would hand Brandon the presents later on, when the time was ripe. 

‘Giving Brandon space’ may have been a noble decision with selfless intentions, but as Jamie sat down in the bedroom with his research materials, he soon began to jokingly begrudge his self-imposed generosity. The minutes passed so slowly Jamie could feel every single one of them crawl up and down his skin in an impassioned shiver. 

Seriously, it was like a time warp. Each second seemed like an hour. Jamie tried all sorts of distractions, such as breathing exercises or revolving in his mind his shift schedule for the upcoming week, alternating them with repeated attempts to stay focused on the data he did his best to pretend he was processing. Soon he had to face how futile all of it was when all he could really think of was watching the hands sluggishly sliding up and down the clock, and mentally urging them to have mercy and speed it up. 

Here Jamie went again, in the mind frame of a teenage boy counting down the hours to his dream date. He took it with a healthy amount of humor and self-deprecating distance, but a large part of him was being very serious about these feelings – and he knew that.

He knew that. He understood that. He didn’t wonder why.

He was simply being awake and alert to how much he cared – how much into deep he was with that man. 

After some more of those swollen, warped minutes had passed, Jamie finally allowed himself to get back to Brandon. Brandon must have certainly had enough space by then, and there was only so much time that Jamie was able to patiently sit out praying for the minutes to pace up. 

He joined Brandon in the living room, playing and nuzzling with the cats while trying to throw a topic for discussion every now and then in an attempt to engage Brandon in spending some actual time with him. 

Naturally, earlier on Jamie had given some serious thought as to what these topics should be so that they would be of interest to Brandon rather than one-sided, and encourage him to contribute to the conversation. 

Thus, Jamie initiated a talk about the movies that they could see that evening, then the focus moved to diet and nutrition with reference to their upcoming venture into the Indian restaurant – Jamie shared a couple of fun facts he had discovered about the benefits of Asian cuisine, which Brandon then could comment or elaborate upon – and then the subject turned into that recent fashion TV show that Jamie knew Brandon liked to watch more or less regularly. 

All the while, Brandon was being Brandon, which meant that he did remain aloof and didn’t exactly give the impression of being crazy about participating in that opinion exchange. Participating he was, nevertheless, and although he was mostly on the passive-recipient side of their discussion, he did show some curiosity or even invigoration every now and then. He was clearly trying, and for Jamie, this was completely enough.

This little talk might have seemed like a minor thing, but it was thoroughly satisfying to Jamie. He got from it exactly what he wanted: a sense of their togetherness, and an experience of being at ease with each other, spending carefree leisure time in each other’s company. Frankly, at this point, at this level, it was perfection: a sweet, soft, understated perfection of being right where they were supposed to be. 

It finally was time to think about lunch. When Jamie mentioned it, Brandon got up and froze the laptop, stating that he wanted to go for a run first. He also encouraged Jamie to go ahead and eat without him if he was hungry, insisting that he was still full from that generous breakfast served by Jamie a few hours before.

As much as Jamie found that incomprehensible, he didn’t argue. Eating disorders were called disorders for a reason, after all, and he believed that Brandon meant it when he said his stomach was still crammed with a loaf of toast and an orange he had had four hours earlier. Jamie knew that it was brave enough of Brandon to let go of his no-breakfast rule just for that day mostly to make Jamie happy. As a result, he didn’t find it necessary to control Brandon’s meals all day through, especially as they had more feasting planned later for the day. An overkill would be unnecessary and potentially harmful to their agenda. 

Jamie also appreciated how Brandon tacitly conceded to put his meticulous nature aside and changed his usual schedule of running in the evening in order to better adjust for what they had in their timetable for his birthday. Actually, Jamie had expected on Brandon’s part some fussing about disrupting the pampered schedule, but that never happened. This must have felt quite like an anxiety-inducing compromise, and Jamie was touched by the way Brandon wordlessly yielded his habits for the sake of the vision that Jamie held for The Day. 

Jamie calmly observed while Brandon changed into his jogging T-shirt and sweatpants behind the ajar bedroom door. Shyly but hungrily peeking with the corner of his eye at Brandon’s slender naked back, his long, stringy arms and legs, and his overall beautiful form, Jamie had to clench his teeth and repress his yearning, telling himself that he needed to wait patiently just a little longer, try being his best for Brandon just a little harder, and maybe really soon his honest efforts would be rewarded the way he dreamt they would. 

Jamie continued to look on as Brandon put his phone in the arm band and plugged in the earphones, and afterwards carefully chose a playlist for this day’s run. Brandon’s moves were invariably smooth and graceful, and Jamie couldn’t help but stare in wonder at how stylish he was even in plain sports outfit, exuding this raw, virile masculinity that was so specific to him alone. 

Before Brandon left, Jamie spontaneously approached him and embraced him once again, wishing him a great workout. 

He realized he’d been suddenly showering Brandon with affection definitely more than ever in a good number of weeks – or maybe simply ever, meaning like never before. 

And it wasn’t just about making Brandon feel special, sense the care and experience the love. No, this affection was gushing out straight from Jamie’s soul, uncontainable and not needing to be contained.

Suddenly, Jamie realized the simple truth: he loved someone, and he wanted for it to be known. He wanted for that love to turn into touch, into words, into the air he breathed. 

To feel this way was an unparalleled beauty. Jamie felt his eyes brim with the tears of quiet gratitude at being able to be this vulnerable and truthful once more in his life.

Brandon answered to Jamie’s tender gesture with his typical smug half-smile and an equally usual, uncommunicative “Yeah”, one hand on the door handle, waiting for Jamie to let him go like a kid fed up with his mother’s excessive display of fondness. Jamie found this comparison truly amusing, but he didn’t share it with Brandon – for some reason he supposed Brandon might not get this kind of humor anyway, and he didn’t want to endlessly stop him leaving, either.

And so Brandon left. 

It was about half past one PM – as Jamie had checked with his wristwatch for about hundredth time in some ten minutes. He decided he would use the time without Brandon to wind down before the challenges that the evening would bring.

He played some of his favorite, mood-setting music, and he made himself some lunch. Then he fed the cats, changed the hamsters’ water, and settled himself with a nice book. 

This time he was more relaxed, so that immersing himself in the reading went smoother than previously. In fact, he was calm enough not to check his watch for a significantly long stretch of time.

When he did remember to glance at his wrist, the hands pointed quarter past two. _Brandon should be getting back soon_ , understood Jamie, and an excited, anxious thrill spiraled down his spine. 

Suddenly feeling all twitchy, Jamie got up and made a few rounds around the apartment. The impression of a dog scurrying all over the place looking forward to the return of his master brought on him a fit of good-natured, self-deprecating laughter. 

Another ten minutes passed and there was still no trace of Brandon. Vaguely aware of how ridiculous he was acting, keeping an almost literal watch on the front door, Jamie commanded himself to settle down. 

He got himself some coffee, seated himself in the sofa, and tried his hardest to resume reading, even though the calm and focus had by now been gone. 

Then it was quarter to three.

_I wonder what’s taking him so long. Maybe he had a longer run scheduled for today. Or maybe he’s been doing extra miles to burn these breakfast calories._

Investing a lot of his creativity in explaining the reasons for Brandon being late, Jamie eventually put the book away, lay down with his cats and just listened to the radio. At this point he already knew that the flood of thoughts, emotions and images inside his head wouldn’t let him concentrate on the text, no matter how riveting it was. 

_Maybe I shouldn’t have made him eat this breakfast after all. I should’ve known better. Now he must be going crazy about breaking his dumb diet regime, and I’m stuck here waiting for him. Well, it serves me right._

Now it was five past three. 

_Alright. I don’t want to be a pest and disturb his workout. But now I’m starting to get worried. I’m going to give him another twenty minutes, and when it’s been two hours since he left, I will call him._

He had been postponing that decision for as long as he could. It was his last resort, and in his heart of hearts he had already known what the result would be. 

And the result was exactly just that: Brandon didn’t answer. 

Or even more than just that, he had switched his phone off. 

Again, Jamie was quick to put some makeshift rationalizations forward to counter the memories crashing down on him. 

_Maybe he doesn’t want his exercise to be interrupted and that’s why he switched his phone off. Oh right, he listens to his music on the phone… but maybe this time he decided to run without the soundtrack. Who knows?_

_Maybe he just wants to be left alone for now. Maybe I was being too pushy._

_Maybe I freaked him out. He needs space now. Yes, that’s definitely it._

After the clock had struck four, Jamie tried again. Still to no avail.

_It’s me, isn’t it? I blew this. I should have listened to him better, or really asked him what he wanted, how he wanted to spend his birthday, rather than impose my ideas on him and take his ‘okay’ or ‘alright’ as ‘yes’._

_I can still fix it. When he comes back, I’ll tell him I can call everything back and we’re going to spend his birthday his way._

After another failed attempt to contact Brandon at half past four, Jamie experienced a wave of disbelief.

_I don’t understand what’s happening, though. He didn’t seem uncomfortable. If anything, he looked at ease and quite happy. I really don’t get it. It can’t be that he doesn’t like my plans or he’s angry with me. If that was the case, he would have just said so._

_There must be something stopping him out there. I really hope he’s alright._

Thus, Jamie spend another dozen or two minutes contemplating catastrophic scenarios of how Brandon might have been attacked, or robbed, or injured. After all he didn’t know where Brandon’s running routes exactly were and if they were in safe neighborhoods. 

Curiously enough, fretful and concerned as he was, this time around Jamie didn’t think of calling the police or the hospital. Apparently, a not-so-conscious part of him recognized what the truth was, preventing him from taking redundant, troublesome steps. 

At about five, things were getting heated. Jamie nervously recognized that they were supposed to leave for the theatre around this time at the latest if they still wanted to see a movie and then make it to the restaurant. They had their table booked from nine. 

The impending reality of having his dream evening destroyed – his spotless, meticulously planned vision of taking back control over his love and his life, a vision which had cost him time, heart and money – had begun to hover around Jamie’s head like a ruthless, cynical vulture. 

Half past five, four hours since Brandon had left, Jamie suddenly experienced a shot of agitation. Feeling at once both threatened and energized, like an animal with a triggered fight-or-flight response, he grabbed the phone this one last time.

He knew that after he dialed Brandon’s number there would be no turning back. Until the very last millisecond, however, the held on to the hope that this time it would be different.

It wasn’t. Instead of Brandon’s deep, sonorous voice, all Jamie got was the memorized routine: 

“The number you are trying to reach is currently unavailable. Please try again”, 

followed by a thick, dark silence.

Surely, there would be no trying again now.

The perfect day bubble burst within mere seconds.

Just like that – just like Brandon – it was gone.

***

Sunday, September 11 2011 – aka The Day – did turn out to be a very busy night for Jamie Marshall, although for reasons very different from those he had imagined.

His first task was to curb the tidal wave of emotions that broke the superficially solid dam the instant he realized Brandon wasn’t coming back. It truly was an emergency, a sort of natural disaster, appropriately to the effort Jamie had been putting for hours – days, in fact – to keep outside his consideration and consciousness all the signals that implied that Brandon might have seen Jamie’s celebration plans very differently. 

Now that the riverbank had burst, the flow of repressed rage, frustration, anxiety and distress hit Jamie up front, an unrestrained force of nature about to crush him. It literally made him sway, unsure if he was able to keep his balance. 

Fighting for his breath like he really had been submerged by the ocean and was on the verge of drowning, he leant against the wall, trying his bravest to fight the dizziness and nausea coming up his throat. 

Holding on to dear life, he clenched his fists and gritted his teeth, as if afraid that if he let go, if he relaxed as little as a single muscle, he would fall apart. 

He focused on his breathing, adjusting it to those waves of raw emotion breaking on him. 

He breathed in sorrow and exhaled fury. He breathed in anguish and exhaled bitterness. 

As soon as he sufficiently stabilized his heart rate and his standing on his own two feet, he moved to the bedroom, shut the door – like he even needed this kind of privacy protection, he wasn’t expecting anyone to enter this space anytime soon, was he? – and threw himself heavily on the bed.

He gripped the sheet, buried his head in the pillows, and… and had no idea what to do next.

He didn’t even feel like crying. Opening up the floodgates would keep him occupied for quite some time, sure enough, until he cried himself to sleep or calmed down enough to figure out the steps to follow. The problem was, he wasn’t even sad. He wasn’t in despair. He wasn’t heartbroken, and if he was, he was unable to feel it.

What he did feel was rage. This rage felt like a heavy, pulsating tension running deep inside his veins, like poison in his blood. The poison had quickly reached his heart, making him feel hopelessly sick, like this pain and turmoil would never end until it killed him, ripping his body apart with those hot, trembling tides. 

The problem with anger – Jamie’s problem with anger – was that he usually repressed it, going out of his way to keep it away from his awareness and his emotional landscape. He had thus no drill at hand, not much of an idea what to do when anger did break through his defenses and seized him. 

When he was sad, he cried. When he was afraid, he thought about how he could keep himself safe or overcome his fears. When he was ashamed, depending on the situation, he hid away or tried harder.

But what did he do when he was angry?

Right now, he felt horrifyingly out of control, like it was that emotion that had him, and not the other way round. 

He would try screaming in the pillows, but there was just no trace of a sound in his throat – not to mention the sheer embarrassment of such attempts. 

He would try breaking some dishes or smashing some furniture, but what was the use? In the end, he would end up the one hurt by destroying his own property. Hurting himself any more wasn’t exactly his intention. Besides, he would likely mess up this theatrical fit of rage, too. He should probably leave hurting him to those who did it expertly. 

Or, alternatively, just to get a little even, he could destroy something that belonged to Brandon. Like those ridiculous supplies of outrageously expensive healthy food, or equally laughable collections of brand clothes, or that despicable laptop.

_Wait… his laptop?_

Like Pavlov’s dog upon hearing the sound of a bell, Jamie rapidly stretched his arms and got up. If he had just remembered he had left the iron on, he still wouldn’t have made it as quick to the living room as he had right now. 

It didn’t take a lot of searching – Brandon had left his laptop exactly where he normally used it, right there on the desk, in plain sight. Perhaps Brandon wasn’t as smart as he liked to think he was, after all.

Seating himself in the chair that was usually occupied by Brandon on an almost constant basis, led by a morbid curiosity as much as by a self-righteous indignation and a very personal lust for revenge, Jamie opened the laptop and casually pressed the power button. 

Did he feel remorse for what he was about to do? Did he have a sense of crossing a line, of doing something reproachable? Not at all. Brandon was only getting what he deserved. For people like him, people who obeyed no rules, who mocked the rules, who thought they were exempt from any rules, no rules applied indeed. 

If anything, Jamie felt the sweet, empowering excitement, the thrill of doing something forbidden, something he wouldn’t normally do under any circumstances. Now he could use the very tool that had been causing him pain for so long against the abuser himself. What could have been any more beautiful than this? There was justice in the world, after all.

So Brandon wanted Jamie to join in his game? Fair enough. This time Jamie would make sure he was up to the challenge. In no time, he really had become worked up and centered, with grim delight looking forward to discovering the treasure trove of obscenities and perversion on Brandon’s hard drive and in his browser history.

Yes, it was about payback. But it was also so much more than that. It was about fairness, about exposing Brandon in black and white for who he was: a selfish, heartless prick. 

No sooner had Jamie started to revel in his enraged self-satisfaction than he faced the most obvious hurdle. 

Of course, Brandon’s laptop was password-protected. 

Jamie sighed with exasperation, angrily tossing his head to the side and leaning on the backrest with a loud screech of the chair against floor. 

Things were in his way, like they always had.

But he wasn’t giving in, was he? He was tougher than that.

Brandon, or Jessie for that matter, or his own family, or the whole world might have taken him for a whiny, needy, insecure pussy that could be molded, abandoned and taken for granted any way they pleased. But they didn’t know better. They didn’t really know Jamie. 

Deep inside, Jamie was a force to be reckoned with. Not so many people knew anything about it, but those few who did had found the hard way it wasn’t wise to make Jamie their enemy. This violent power inside him was something he kept comatose on most days, but it still remained stored safely within, ready to be awaken and protect him should the need arise. 

He was almost grateful to Brandon now for having finally unleashed that power. 

Consequently, Jamie wasted no time getting back to his bedroom, where he grabbed his own computer and swiftly typed the query ‘computer password reset’ in the browser.

Uncle Google didn’t let him down, providing him with answers, tips and solutions galore. While most of them were full of incomprehensible programmers jargon and nerd babble, Jamie relentlessly, resolutely persisted and read on, from scraps and bits of information that he was able to understand creating a patchwork which was tailor-made for his needs. 

As it soon turned out, all that he needed to reset an OS password was another computer – which, sure enough, he had and was just using – together with a CD or a flash drive and some downloadable password-resetting software, which he could get his hands on in no time, too. It was all so easy, almost too easy to be true. A sharp turn away from the harrowing resent that had tormented him only a while ago, now Jamie only wanted to roll around in spasms of evil genius laughter.

Of course, the whole procedure was rather complex and probably had to take quite some time, but Jamie didn’t mind that. He was confident he had more than enough time to spare before Brandon returned.

In the meantime, while the whole thing was being downloaded and installed, he could now finally think of calling that unlucky Indian restaurant and cancelling their reservation.

In his state of mind, he frankly would be forgiven not to bother, and if the other party was really concerned about them not showing up, they would call him first anyway, as he had given them his telephone as the contact number. Still, the thing was, those folks were wonderful cooks and, probably, decent people as well. They didn’t deserve to be treated like garbage just because Jamie had had this crazy idea of celebrating the birthday of a self-centered pleasure-seeking jerk.

Neither did Jamie, of course, but that was a different matter entirely.

***

It was a long and fruitful night, even if the entertainment it offered was of the gross, toxic kind rather than amusing and fun. Brandon’s bookmarks alone had been enough to keep Jamie occupied until the break of dawn. 

And they did eat up a lot of Jamie’s time. All those Red Tube videos revealed to him more about Brandon than anything he might have learned living with this man for half a year now. It was ironic how he had thought all this time he wanted nothing more than to get to know the real Brandon exactly the way he was, and yet now the truth as he saw it repelled him – it really was too much for him, making his head spin and having him think that whoever the sick owner of this device was, he genuinely wanted nothing to do with him. 

Still, for all of the disgust and disbelief he experienced, nothing prevented Jamie from plunging deeper and deeper into the world of that very unhealthy stranger who somehow happened to be sharing his apartment. To the contrary, the perverted world of Brandon’s Red Tube favorites and preferences sucked Jamie in, dragging him down a morbidly compelling way. 

The nauseating blur of images and sounds created by people-objects with their object body parts, object toys and object activities made Jamie feel all sorts of things. While a narrow range of those videos did seem legitimately arousing – as much as Jamie dreaded to admit to such an opinion on something as debasing and vile at its core as pornography – most were simply outrageous, either sickening or plain insane, planting in Jamie’s mind alternating thoughts of _Is this even anatomically possible?_ , _Damn, that’s so humiliating!_ , and _What kind of person can find this stuff exciting?_.

But whatever he came across, he kept watching anyway. The hours had passed and he still was plastered to somebody else’s computer which he had accessed essentially by stealth, going out of his way to violate that somebody’s privacy without even appreciating that it was the proper name to call what he was doing. 

He didn’t feel fatigue, although it was already well past midnight. He didn’t feel any pain, not even anger of the betrayal. He could only think of carrying on, intoxicated and entranced, like he wanted to make up for the time lost and for once, for the change, really find out, really understand the perverted intruder he had let into his life. Into his apartment. Into his bed. And into his soul. 

Still, there was more to Brandon’s bookmarks than just porn, plain old innocent porn, as one might be tempted to ironically put it. Even though merely watching some those videos, and taking in the titles and categories of others, was already burdening enough to Jamie’s cornered mind, Jamie couldn’t refuse a further investigation of the load of dirty secrets which Brandon’s computer had in excess. 

In hindsight, Jamie had to admit he wasn’t exactly prepared for what was in store. Brandon’s porn collection might have been obnoxious, but also vaguely satisfying, working miracles for Jamie’s sense of self-righteousness. It was mostly so because Jamie actually expected to find this stash in Brandon’s browser; frankly, he was as much as looking for it and hoping to uncover it there (indeed, if it had turned out that Brandon’s computer was all clean and proper, Jamie would have been magnificently disappointed). 

On the other hand, Jamie’s imagination hadn’t been able to grasp much more than just pornography. Consequently, it was only logical that he hadn’t really predicted what other evidence stored on Brandon’s computer he might still find. 

On a purely intellectual level, Jamie had known that there was plenty of other ‘entertainment’ that people could do when spellbound by their addiction, watching porn and hooking up with random people being but the most socially acceptable tip of an iceberg. On an emotional level, however, it hadn’t occurred to Jamie that these ‘other things’ could concern Brandon as well. And that was true in spite of everything that he had learned in theory about sex addiction, and in spite of him being at least remotely aware how little he really knew about Brandon himself. 

So, following his Red Tube session Jamie discovered that Brandon had bookmarked quite a number of online sex chats which, upon a cautious investigation, turned out to involve live camera feed. 

In all his guilelessness, Jamie wasn’t even aware people could do that while getting it on online. Of course even a naïve goodie such as himself knew people could have online conversations, meeting up for dates or trysts more like, employing either text, much like in a regular chat, or sound connection to communicate while they were indulging in masturbation or any other lonely sex activity. But it had somehow never crossed his mind that in the age of Skype and video streams people would use their internet cameras to flash a stranger during an impersonal, obscene face to face (or crotch to crotch, actually) encounter.

Was this kind of sex really something Brandon was into?

And even more urgently, was it something he liked to do, on a regular basis, right there in Jamie’s apartment, behind Jamie’s unsuspecting back? 

Despite himself, Jamie envisioned a horny Brandon with that delirious glimmer in his eyes Jamie himself had had the privilege to witness only once, a hysterically thrilled and visibly content Brandon frantically jerking off to an illusion of a heated connection with anonymous tits-and-ass pixels. 

And just as involuntarily, Jamie compared that picture of Brandon’s sexual ecstasy with that dull and lifeless aura he exuded whenever in bed with Jamie, with the numbness of his body and its insensitivity to Jamie’s touch, with how passive and disinterested Brandon would be at all times, as if sex with Jamie was nothing but a miserable chore to him. 

This discovery wasn’t something that made Jamie all smug and proud anymore. To be fair, it was salt rubbed in an open wound. 

A wound that for a brief and blissful moment of revenge Jamie had forgotten he even had. 

Yet, even this still wasn’t all that Jamie could discover hanging around Brandon’s personal files. The most interesting part was still ahead of him. 

It involved prostitute booking sites, all very sophisticated and very specific. Chances were Brandon had been a favorite customer of a number of service providers of this type. 

Upon this revelation, the sense of dread overcame in Jamie all the conceivable rivaling emotions including outrage, condemnation or loathing. 

His hands had gone cold, and beads of sweat dropped in narrow streams down his temples. His pulse had frozen for a while, although his chest felt hot and whirling. 

Eventually he jumped to his feet, nervously walked to the kitchen, and there he leant heavily against the window sill, his face turned to the outside, and yet he could see nothing but the thick black void regardless of all the city lights and the usual clamor of New York by night. 

As it seemed, he had the same thick black void inside his head. It was only interrupted – disturbed rather than illuminated – by flashlights of abrupt, panicked impressions.

Those were more of catchphrases rather than complete, full-fledged thoughts.

Safe sex. HIV. Hookers in his apartment. Orgies in his own bed, on his sofa, in his bathroom or wherever, while he was away at work, missing every second he spent apart from that man.

Bending forward, Jamie rested his elbow against the window pane and forcefully pressed his forehead against his arm, as if he was in a wrestling ring trying to push an invisible opponent out the mat. He panted strenuously as the impact of what he had found out in his careless investigation revealed itself to him in small, steady fragments.

It was funny how rage made the world spin at the speed of light in an overdrive mode, while fear made everything move in slow motion, rendering you painfully conscious of each passing second, each turbulent heartbeat, each laborious breath with the air in your lungs resembling lead. 

Like disjointed scenes from a dream or perhaps some old movie whose title and plot he couldn’t quite recall, Jamie remembered those calm and trusting moments from this year’s June once upon a different lifetime. 

He remembered how he had taken Brandon to the lab to make sure they both were alright and negative. He remembered Brandon’s remorseful face upon the suggestion that he might have involuntarily endangered Jamie. He remembered how Brandon seemed much more worried about having exposed Jamie to some kind of STD than about the possibility of having contracted it himself. 

He remembered the precious feeling of being cared for, cherished even, in Brandon’s own unique way, aloof yet pure and gripping. 

He remembered what he had lost. Or perhaps what had never been his in the first place. 

Once again Jamie felt betrayed, but this time it was on a whole new level, one that involved not just his dignity and integrity, but also his health and physical safety. 

For the first time that day, tears finally forced their way down to his eyes.

Even then, those two single drops weren’t eager to be shed, like they knew they weren’t there to bring release or relief. 

They were only there as a testimony of hopelessness – they served as a guidepost on a dead end from which there was no getting away, and no turning back.

***

Amazingly enough, Brandon actually had the nerve to come back home by dawn. 

When he returned, it was a couple of minutes past five. The windows in their bedroom faced east, so even before Jamie could peek at the wristwatch, from the faint light of the break of day he was able to tell that the wretched September 11 was now officially over. 

By then Jamie had been in bed for some forty minutes, not having slept a wink. After a very busy, sleepless night – busy as expected, although for reasons significantly different than he had assumed and hoped for – he decided to lie down, not sure what else to do with himself. He knew he was too tired and too shaken to sleep, and too beaten down with all he had seen and felt over the course of night to care if he had to get up and get himself ready to work in roughly two hours. Still, it seemed that, unwittingly, he had arrived at a funny point in his life that all he could do was to lie down and wait.

Wait for Brandon to return. Wait for the new day to begin. Wait for his life to keep happening in spite of himself. 

So he was just lying there, kind of comatose, awake but unable to move, to look around, to do anything at all except breathing. He hadn’t even bothered to change his clothes, not seeing the point in concern about his own comfort or the condition of his wardrobe (to the contrary, he derived some underhanded, delicious pleasure thinking how Brandon’s inner cleanliness freak would get a heart attack seeing Jamie’s wrinkled shirt he possibly had spent hours ironing).

Although he remained motionless all the time, he was lightheaded like he had been staring down a pitch-black abyss. The folds and creases of his half-empty sheets felt like waves, and his body like a hapless boat rocked by stormy seas. 

Then amidst this everlasting vertigo, all of a sudden, a metallic clank of the front door announced Brandon’s return.

Initially, Jamie stayed frozen, unsure if this was even something of interest to him. Like ripped straight from the middle of a dream, he was confused, unable to tell why he was where he was and what was the meaning of it all.

And then he remembered. 

His body, his senses remembered before his mind did.

Powered by his instantly refreshed and recharged emotions – the nausea of humiliation, the backstabs of disappointment, the crushing gravity of shattered plans – Jamie leapt out of bed and stormed out of the bedroom. On his way, he made sure to grab the carefully prepared, aesthetically wrapped gift pack he had gone to ridiculous lengths to have ready over the last two weeks. 

He paced into the living room, where Brandon, still in his jogging clothes he had been wearing when he left some fifteen hours before, was casually taking of his sweaty T-shirt – like all of this was a routine activity in a routine scene, simply just another day. 

He didn’t even look Jamie’s way, but it was as if he hadn’t noticed him – not as if he was too afraid to look him in the eye. 

He didn’t seem ashamed at all, or worried, or remorseful about what he had done. 

Pure anger blocked Jamie’s veins, yet again causing him to feel dazed, but also strangely energized. This angry feeling instantly pumped out the bitter words that had been clogging his throat for hours.

“So you’ve had quite a workout, huh? I do hope you enjoyed it”, he hissed with violent sarcasm, making sure to stay by the bedroom door. He was too appalled to approach Brandon and inhale the stench of all he had been keeping himself busy with since they last saw each other. 

Brandon gave him his typical, indifferent look. 

“Yeah”, he replied blankly, and, apparently finding Jamie unworthy of devoting any more of his priceless time to, he turned away and tried to move to the bathroom – because seriously, what other place in this apartment could rival the secluded luxury of the locked bathroom? 

Jamie bit his lips so hard they almost bled.

‘Yeah’? So that was what Brandon had to say? After all the crazy shit he had just done? 

Just when Jamie had thought Brandon couldn’t possibly get any more disrespectful, any more demeaning to him – he did. He simply went and did. Well done. Great job.

All along it had been Jamie’s plan to shove the gift pack into Brandon’s hands as ostentatiously as possible, in an attempt to make Brandon feel as bad about it as it could get. He hadn’t given much thought as to how he would specifically go about it, deciding he’d find the best way to do it as he went. 

That was exactly what happened indeed. Brandon’s nonchalance corroded what little remained of Jamie’s self-control, prompting Jamie to hastily move past him, block his passage to the bathroom, and literally throw the intricately wrapped set in his face. 

“Well let me say that again, happy fucking birthday”, Jamie growled, doing nothing to hide his temper, in fact quite happy to let it show in all its glory with after what felt like Brandon’s provocative permission to do that.

Secretly Jamie counted on this show to impress Brandon in some way. It was only rarely, after all, that one could see Jamie as much as angry, and it were only well-deserved exceptions when one was allowed to witness Jamie’s rage. 

Still – was it even any surprising? – all Brandon did was that slow-motion, deliberate movement of putting the package back on the floor. He coupled that with a disinterested, lazy look full of pity, a look that seemed to be saying _But really, you’re so pathetic_ louder than a scream would.

What Brandon did say, however, was a light-noted “Cut the drama, okay?”, served with a mild smirk – hardly detectable, yet unambiguously manifesting how he considered Jamie undeserving of taking him seriously. 

As if the direction things were taking wasn’t enough to make Jamie feel like he had been thrown into a muddy puddle of humiliation and stomped upon, Brandon had to use the word _drama_. The single word Jamie was so allergic to that just hearing it made him fly into anaphylactic shock, complete with seizures, a mental rash and altered consciousness. The magic spell anyone could easily use if they wanted to disarm Jamie quickly and effectively, invalidating his experiences and ridiculing his inner world. 

Brandon wasn’t merely a cold stranger anymore. He was now Jamie’s enemy. 

“No! It’s not okay! Nothing’s okay!”, Jamie screamed vehemently, his voice ringing loud and clear in spite of how shaken and defenseless he felt on the inside. 

That all Brandon answered him with was a blank, bored stare only maddened Jamie more, challenging him to yell even louder, to pierce Brandon with an even more fiery, unforgiving look like he wanted to burn a scathing hole in him, all in a doomed quest to affect Brandon in any way. 

“I can’t believe you did this to me, I just can’t”, he went on exclaiming, the words he had kept repressed for so long instantly gushing out at a long-awaited convenience. “I can’t believe this crazy shit is happening. Is this for real? Are _you_ for real?” What started out strong and practically warlike gradually gave way to the shades of despondency and anguish, ending up in a pleading whimper. “But seriously, who the fuck are you?”

Jamie couldn’t help it. The emotions coming down him were too powerful, and having blocked them for such a long time, now he had no command over them. Demanding explanations and showing his own hurt displaced the power from Jamie to Brandon, and while Jamie predicted Brandon would waste no time using it against him, he had genuinely no idea how to prevent it happening.

And happen it did. The sneer on Brandon’s face widened to a degree there was now no room for doubt it really was there, growing even more condescending in the process.

“My, you sure are worked up, why don’t you sit down while I go get you some Xanax?”, he offered, fake sweetness oozing from his voice. His derisively patronizing tone reminded Jamie with a sharp needle prick that however rarely Brandon might have employed sarcasm, he was perfectly capable of it nevertheless, and once he did make use of it, it was downright callous and it hurt like hell. 

That, and besides, Jamie was usually very vulnerable to all forms of mockery. It hadn’t taken Brandon much to disarm him, in the blink of an eye emptying Jamie’s seemingly endless reservoir of angry, pained, self-righteous things to say. 

In truth, it wasn’t just that reservoir that had gone empty – it also happened to Jamie’s mind as such, purging it of all coherence, shrouding it with a cloud of humiliation and that stinging, solitary shame. 

Again, Jamie leant against the wall, the weight of it all feeling too heavy to hold up on his own two feet.

“Why…?” For a moment, it was all that Jamie could say, all he could think of – an endless question ‘why’, a huge undefined ‘why’, pleading for reasons of everything and nothing specific all the same. 

Then he looked at Brandon, at his cold demeanor, his uncaring eyes, the insentient mask that was his face, and the full-formed self-evident question forced its way to Jamie’s mouth by itself. “Why are you being such an asshole?”

Brandon responded deliberately, without any haste, yet he did it right away. It was like he had expected this question all along and had his answer prepared for such an event, even before Jamie himself could think of asking it. 

“Maybe that’s just who I am.”

His stern, penetrating gaze was relentless and unafraid, defiant in every single bit. It made Jamie feel like he was about to crumble, unprepared to wage this war he himself had decided to venture into.

Brandon didn’t have to say any more. The obvious implication, _And if you can’t handle who I am, then get the fuck out of my life and leave me be_ , hanged sufficiently thickly and clearly in the air they shared. 

To Jamie’s unforgiving conscience, it also had just as unmistakable ring of _But you did promise you wouldn’t leave and you loved me just the way I am, so now what? Are you giving up on me just because I’m not as fancy as you have thought? You’re a liar. And a coward. And you’ve just betrayed me_. 

Guilt tripping now, was it? How lovely. 

Brandon didn’t even need to try. Not with Jamie. A slight innuendo like that, one which was uttered with the right words at a right time, was perfectly enough to force Jamie to give in, making him feel like he was the bad guy, against all the reason and everything he had thought he knew.

Backing down from his complaints and from trying to get even with Brandon, Jamie made an effort to displace his focus to something more constructive. There were still things to attend to, things to settle and to fix, even as the world was crushing down. There was actually even some comfort in the thought that no matter what kind and what scale of disaster one had been faced with, the world still kept on turning. There still were things to keep yourself busy with, drawing your mind away from how your world was ending. 

Having averted his stare to the wall, Jamie closed his eyes and steadied his breathing. He changed the subject, proceeding to the practical matter that was the most urgent to him right now.

“…Please tell me you use protection. Like, always. No exceptions.”

When he glanced over his shoulder to take note of Brandon’s reaction, he saw that Brandon appeared baffled by the sudden end of the blame fest and the switch of the topic. The confusion, however, wasn’t enough to make Brandon any less mean, if it hadn’t in fact amplified his vicious attitude.

“Protection? Seriously?”, he retorted, flashing his impressive teeth in a malicious display of amusement, and then abruptly replacing the smile with a smug raise of an eyebrow. “Is that your new obsession, or what?”

Of course. Ridicule and looking down on the other party was always a perfect evasion strategy and Brandon was a master of it. It didn’t matter if Jamie was throwing hysterical accusations of Brandon treating him in a hurtful and unfair way or trying to make a very serious and relevant point inquiring about something he had every right to know. Merely implying that Jamie’s stance didn’t deserve to be taken seriously was enough to make Jamie want to coil in disgrace. Brandon knew it, used it, and abused it to an excess. 

At this point Jamie shared Brandon’s need to put on a laughing act just to cover up his grim, discouraged feelings. 

But since the show had to go on and likewise Jamie had to know if they had been safe, he only clenched his teeth, disregarded the insult, and persisted.

“Do you?”

He inquired repeatedly as he lifted his stare away from the wall and looked Brandon straight in the face. It was a sort of gaze duel between the two of them, one Jamie was destined to lose precisely because he cared too much about the stakes. 

Brandon shoved his hands into the pockets of his joggers, making the posture of an obnoxious, self-important teenage bully. 

“Why do you care? It’s none of your business”, he hissed with a glower as he resorted to the dreaded ultimate point, _Stay out of my shit, you’re a nobody to me_. 

The sheer absurdity of making this point under the circumstances instantly relit the flare of Jamie’s anger. Combined with the sense of horror that Jamie got from Brandon refusing to answer his straightforward question in a straightforward manner, practically confirming that Brandon’s conscience wasn’t as clear in this regard either, it resulted in a gunpowder mix of resentment and fear on the verge of exploding. 

This time allowing himself to follow the rules of Brandon’s game, Jamie scoffed away, employing sarcasm as a weapon against his own powerlessness toward a situation that he genuinely couldn’t stand the thought of accepting. 

Nervously running fingers through his hair in an _I’m speechless_ gesture, he responded with an argumentative “Guess what?”, waving his arms around in disbelief before he promptly added, “I’ll pretend you didn’t just say that”.

He knew Brandon and the part Brandon played right now in this setting too well to hope that his lines would impress Brandon in any way. And yet, just as it had always been the case, Brandon’s petulance and his stubborn disregard of Jamie’s concern made Jamie more depressed than it was worth it.

“Be my guest”, he shrugged, uninterested, uncooperative, and leaving Jamie all alone in their conversation as ever.

Jamie shook his head, silently expressing his capitulation.

“I do love it how you always make me feel like I’m talking to a five-year old”, he commented ironically, rolling his eyes in self-defense against the ruthlessly encroaching feelings of failure. How did he talk to Brandon about their safety? How did he get Brandon to show any regard for their purely physical well-being when all that he lived for was another high and that exotic spice of risk-taking? 

Still blocking Brandon’s way, Jamie rested his back against the bathroom door and he tried again. He told himself that mentally, Brandon apparently was a five-year old indeed, a spoiled, angry preschool kid who failed to understand why his parents would have anything against what he considered the best fun ever. And so, however exasperating that was, Jamie continued explaining the basics to him accordingly, like he would to a five-year old indeed. 

He tried again. “… Even if I didn’t give a fuck about you, which I unfortunately do, you still could have transmitted some kind of shit to me, if you happen to care about that at all.” He wanted this line to be purely informative and objective, realizing that sounding as impersonal as he could might be the only way to convince Brandon to react a little more reasonably. But in the end he couldn’t help coloring his words with shades of blame and bitterness.

He should have known better. There was no way that the emotional, preachy tone he adopted could make Brandon any more responsive – in fact, instead he had handed him a weapon, a perfect excuse to keep making Jamie’s life miserable. 

Jamie had just attacked him, after all, so there was no reason not to retaliate, no reason to summon any good will.

And once Brandon decided not to summon any good will, he sure knew how to make it sting. 

Peering at Jamie with that unnerving mixture of amusement and pity, putting the condescending smirk back on his face, he concluded: “Okay, so you really are obsessed”. And before Jamie’s slow wit allowed him to curb his thoughts and prepare a sufficiently firm response that would remind Brandon he still hadn’t answered to Jamie’s question, Brandon unleashed a yet another self-defense attack. “Uh, well, correct me if I’m wrong, but from what I know, no kind of shit can exactly spread through the air, so there.”

The arrogance, the irony, the disrespect – and the confident ignorance in Brandon’s eyes, the feigned innocence that seemed to be saying _What? I’m just telling the truth, what’s your problem again?_ And indeed, the truth was precisely that – their sex life had been nonexistent for many weeks or even months now, because Brandon had grown bored with Jamie, because Jamie wasn’t enough to keep him happy in bed or otherwise, so even if Brandon had been ignoring the rules of safe sex, the risk that Jamie would have been affected by Brandon’s recklessness were rather slim. In short, Jamie didn’t need to worry so much, at least not about his own safety.

Rationally, Jamie should have been happy about regaining this certitude, but instead he felt like Brandon had stuck his finger in an open wound. 

Paradoxically, feeling anxious about the possibility of having contracted an STD had given Jamie the illusion of some kind of bond with Brandon, some crumbles of faith that he still meant anything in Brandon’s intimate life. And now Brandon had randomly torn that away from him, reminding him that to worry about STDs he would have to be _someone_ in Brandon’s life, which he definitely wasn’t. 

Acting detached and clueless like he always had, Brandon certainly knew a handful of dependable ways how to get Jamie off of his back, making him feel like garbage possibly being the most reliable one. 

Subliminally, Jamie did know he could have led this conversation in a better, more efficient way, and that he could always try again – take back the hurtful, aggressive parts from what he himself had said and emphasize once more that he was only being afraid for his own health. It was a task-oriented conversation anyway, wasn’t it? The goal wasn’t to have a heart-to-heart with Brandon and seek an intimate connection (Jamie’s understated assumptions about him still being of any importance in Brandon’s life and seeking confirmation of these notwithstanding), it was only to find out if Brandon had really been irresponsible and twisted enough – in short, if he had been enough of a dick – to endanger Jamie by having unprotected sex outside their relationship. Be it an hour ago, a week ago, or three months ago, or ever. It didn’t matter when. 

Because contrary to what Brandon may have been telling himself, it didn’t matter if they hadn’t had sex in two months and if Brandon only resumed his running around after they stopped sleeping together (which Jamie had no reason to believe had been the case – Brandon had done precisely everything to lose Jamie’s trust in this respect). As long as Brandon lived under the same roof and slept, or was allowed to sleep in the same bedroom, the potential for resuming their sex life was always open. And Jamie did remember precisely where he had intended for this to go for the last couple of days. Getting Brandon to have sex with him had been supposed to be the crowning achievement of the silly romantic idea that had been The Day, and ironically, it was perhaps only thanks to Brandon’s inconsiderate flight that Jamie had stayed safe.

It seemed like Jamie had narrowly escaped a serious danger. It turned out that it was only by the force of sheer coincidence that he hadn’t willingly jumped into a lion’s den. It felt weird and upsetting, and had a bitter aftertaste of guilt at his own thoughtless participation in Brandon’s irresponsible schemes. Jamie refused to dwell on these emotions any further, letting them refuel his anger instead. 

So no, their recent abstinence didn’t make it alright for Brandon to go cruising or visiting the hookers, and then talking about his sexual health choices like Jamie had nothing to do with it. Jamie had _everything_ to do with it. And he had been _misled_. He had been _lied to_. Brandon’s attitude was not just downright disrespectful or irresponsible, it was bordering on the wrong side of immoral.

Thus, a part of him kept telling him he should retry and spell it all out to Brandon, every single point repeated infinitely until Brandon finally got it. He _wanted_ to be understood – it was a human thing to need it – and he _should_ have made sure he was understood – for the sake of his own safety. 

The thing was, that part stood for roughly ten, maybe fifteen percent of Jamie’s being. All the rest was busy screaming _Fuck it, why am I wasting my time_ , and _I want this loser out of my sight, right now_.

Consequently, for all of the elaborate thought processes and emotional tempests that went on inside him, Jamie put an end to that slightly lengthened pause in their dialogue by throwing a dramatic, haughty “… Whatever”.

He looked on, watching if Brandon would show any trace of remorse or worry, or any human emotions for that matter, or any symptoms of willingness to back down if just a little. 

He didn’t.

In reality, Brandon’s response shouldn’t have mattered. Jamie actually was capable of ending that pointless conversation right there and just leave the scene. Maybe that even would have been the reasonable thing to do. He was almost prepared to do it – but then, his offended, denigrated inner self protested with a shrill: _No way, you can’t let him get away just like that. If you can’t get even, then at least make him feel like shit too_. 

So Jamie obeyed his inner self diligently. He employed a handful of theatrical gestures such as rolling his eyes and impatiently tapping his fingers against the wall, followed by swaying his arms and then shrugging his shoulders. He combined it with a headshake and a sigh like he had intended to say something else but then changed his mind (this much was true, at least). Only then, not even discouraged when he noticed that Brandon wasn’t even looking in his direction anymore, which rendered all of Jamie’s efforts to put on a show in vain, did Jamie proceed to make his hopefully poignant statement: “You know what, fuck you. Enjoy your morning porn session and stay out of my sight as long as I’m here”. 

Although by producing that line Jamie had reached the peak of his menacing capability, Brandon remained unconcerned as ever. If anything, he looked relieved at what seemed like Jamie finally leaving him alone. 

It wasn’t supposed to be like that. The delight at Jamie giving up the topic wasn’t supposed to be Brandon’s only or prevalent feeling after the conversation. Which meant Jamie couldn’t give it up just yet. 

“Oh, and by the way, good luck logging in to your computer”, he threw in a casual manner imitating Brandon’s mechanical tone as he headed back into the bedroom. The casual manner had been calculated, inspired by how it was Brandon who always seemed to employ the most indifferent voice to say things that were the most devastating. 

_Eat this_ , thought Jamie with vindictive satisfaction. _Let’s see how calm and unimpressed you are now._

Of course Brandon would have found out anyway, but at the moment Jamie felt compelled to deviously own up to his malice. He wanted Brandon to make no mistake: he might have been the one who had declared an all-out war, but Jamie, too, knew how to use his weapons wisely.

Jamie pulled the door handle and entered the bedroom, leaving Brandon far behind in the hallway. 

He was greeted with silence, no motion, no stir whatsoever. Closing the door, he was almost starting to feel disappointed.

It was only in another few seconds that he heard a thud of rushed footsteps which stopped right at the bedroom door. He smirked, thinking to himself _Finally, something does impress him_ , listening on to the frantic, stirred voice practically unrecognizable as Brandon’s:

“What the fuck did you just say?”

By now, Jamie was sure his beaming smug smile shone through the wall, basking Brandon in the blinding light of Jamie’s awesomeness. 

“Oh, did I say anything?”, he retorted coyly. Man, did he enjoy it, this eventual, well-earned role reversal! Indeed, revenge tasted best when served cold; after all the humiliation, all the degradation that Jamie had had to struggle with, now it was Brandon’s turn to be the exposed one, the endangered one, the one who was afraid and wanted all the honest answers while the other was putting him on hold and having a blast. 

Brandon shouldn’t be the one to complain. They were still playing his game, after all. It was just that this time, Jamie had made sure he got the right cards.

Like they said, all was fair in love and war. Whatever the difference between the two. 

“Stop fucking around”, snarled Brandon, his demanding tone probably intended to cover up how nervous and panicked he was feeling.

Losing our temper, were we? Helpless and weak with our back against the wall? Pleading to be taken seriously? How cool was it now to try wearing Jamie’s shoes for a while? Was it comfortable? Was it fun?

Relishing in his newfound power, filled to the bone with grandiose self-satisfaction, Jamie lay on his back and savored the petty yet sweet sense of victory.

“I’m not. Have a nice day”, he chirped, stretching his arms and arching his back like a cat lying in the sunshine. A rare, precious moment of peace and relaxation. He enjoyed it while he still could. In about an hour, he’d have to get up and get prepared for work. Besides, he expected Brandon to make some fuss about Jamie hacking his computer. Not too much, but definitely some. 

At this point, with the distance of a couple of hours separating him from his act, Jamie was quite aware that he had gone somewhat overboard with his retaliation measures, that he may have got a little carried away using those crude tactics. Still, it didn’t make him fretful, and it caused him little remorse. He remained certain that whatever he had done was justified, and for some reasons unclear he assumed that Brandon would perceive the situation in a similar way. They both knew that Brandon had had it coming for a long time. In that sick game of theirs, what Jamie had done was simply his idea of getting even, a payback. 

Consequently, Jamie was in it for quite a surprise when suddenly Brandon slammed the bedroom door and bulldozed into the room.

Startled, Jamie propped himself on the elbows and look up to see what Brandon was up to. He had little time for observation, however; in a split second, surprise turned into shock. 

Brandon threw himself down on the bed, his stone-cold eyes oozing hostility and fury. Before Jamie could realize what was coming up, he felt Brandon’s bony hand grab him by the throat.

It was curious just what this gorgeously shaped hand with its long, slender fingers, this object of Jamie’s admiration for the longest time, was capable of doing. Until that exact moment, Jamie had had no idea that this exquisite hand could be made into a tool of instilling so much dread and causing so much pain. 

Jamie’s breathing momentarily slowed down until it virtually arrested, like he wanted to adjust to the situation and postpone the inevitable moment he would struggle for breath for as long as possible. There were no chances for him to fight back. His muscles had become limp and useless. Passively waiting until he perhaps weathered the storm was his only hope of getting away from this unforeseen oppression. 

Lying there like a rag doll, sensing Brandon’s acute fingers plunge into his neck like syringe needles, Jamie unwittingly registered Brandon’s spiteful growling. Funnily enough, while Jamie’s limbs had been as good as paralyzed, his hearing left nothing to be desired. Far from making him dissociate and lose touch with reality, the adrenaline must only have sharpened Jamie’s senses. (Why wasn’t it another way round? He’d definitely have preferred for his ears to go deaf in return for a reliable, self-defending body.) He could hear Brandon’s voice loud and clear, each sound and each word so distinct like they had been his own thoughts inside his own head. 

“What the fuck were you thinking? Huh? That you can fucking spy on me? Fucking take my stuff and act like it’s all yours? You’re fucking crazy, you hear me?” 

His voice was chilling and disturbingly calm despite the volume, ill-suited to the spasmodic movements of his hands. His grip wasn’t very tight, as Jamie could still breathe – barely, but he did get by. It occurred to Jamie that Brandon’s goal apparently wasn’t to kill him, only to hurt him.

It had been pretty much the same for Jamie, too, when he broke into Brandon’s computer. 

“And you say I’m the fuckup here, huh? Huh?”, Brandon snapped on, his voice lashing out at Jamie like a thick rope braided from indignation entwined with contempt. Amazingly, while its sound was still physically so close like its source lay somewhere within Jamie himself, it also seemed so distant and unreal like it was a record playing from a distant universe. 

Jamie’s body was getting increasingly heavy, further excluding any prospects for self-defense. Most importantly, it wasn’t just his body – it didn’t start with his body. It was his mind that under such an attack had gone drowsy. His fear had made him numb and motionless, like he had instantly given up and accepted whatever fate awaited him. _Stay still and maybe somehow you’ll get by_ , a quiet voice inside him pleaded wordlessly, keeping him frozen in the hideout of his body even as it was being violently assaulted from the outside. 

Although he could not consciously realize that, much less put into verbalized thoughts, the dull stupor which his body had entered was appallingly familiar; a tried-and-true, if awful, strategy to survive. Don’t think. Don’t move. Block out the feelings and suspend the time. It’ll work if it’s meant to be. And if it’s not, at least save yourself the trouble, you know the outcome won’t be worth it. 

In Jamie’s mind, this whole incident had lasted for hours, even though he knew that his sense of time was being warped by the shots of adrenaline and cortisol. Stress response had confined what seemed like the whole history of the world into mere seconds. At least, as Jamie realized with that surprising aura of cold clarity, it had most likely taken merely seconds since Brandon had assaulted him until Jamie started to choke. 

_What happens next?_ , he wondered then, too numb to get in touch with his own fear, although it had overwhelmed him so on the physical level. 

_Is he going to kill me? Maybe that would be for the best._

His thoughts were getting more and more detached, like they didn’t concern him – like they referred to someone else entirely. 

_He’s not going to rape me, certainly. That would be so beneath him. I’m not enough of a catch to be raped. But if he tried anything, I’d say yes anyway. It’s not like he doesn’t know at least that._

In the meantime, Brandon’s shouting had become subdued, less and less audible, until it was completely replaced by the dull sound of Jamie’s choking alone.

Then, in an instant, the burden was relieved from Jamie’s throat. His reactions were still delayed and unsure, so it had taken him a while before he and his body discovered that now he could normally breathe again.

Dizzy and sick in the stomach, Jamie lifted himself up on the elbow the moment he realized he was being pierced all the way through by Brandon’s relentless, contemptuous stare. ‘I would have gladly strangled you, but you’re too fucking boring for that. Such a fucking waste of time and effort’, he seemed to be saying.

Jamie exhaled heavily, self-consciously, as if in disbelief that he really could breathe again now, unrestrained and physically safe now. It was only then that the realization of what he had just endured hit him straight in the face with unrestrained force. Like it was on a slow fuse, his body recognized the danger only after it had gone away.

He rested his back against the wall and pulled his legs up to his chest, in a spontaneous attempt to make sure he was guarded, his weak spots such as the neck not as accessible anymore. Then he rolled his back to control his shaking, and buried his face behind his knees to hide the tears of devastation and terror brimming in his eyes. He also wished to hide away from Brandon’s penetrating gaze, so uncompromisingly hateful; to hide away in his own shame at being that guy who would let himself be killed, who would let anyone do anything with him, and never even tried to fight back.

If what was reflected in Brandon’s eyes was the person that he actually was, then Jamie couldn’t help but doubt if he really did deserve to live.

A couple of dreadful moments of silence thick as factory fumes followed. As Jamie was beginning to think that again, as always, it would be up to him to break that silence, the icy blade of Brandon’s voice unexpectedly cut through the nauseating smokescreen of unspeakable emotions.

“You’re going to give me that password.”

It was a statement. Not even a command and much less a question, just a simple, confident statement. 

Not only did it not sound like something Jamie could oppose: it also had the ring of something extremely obvious and inevitable, the sole conceivable course of events. How different was this notion from Jamie’s smug confidence from barely a bunch of minutes before that he was the omnipotent master of Brandon’s fate as symbolized by his personal belongings and private space. 

Jamie’s reply, then, was a careful nod, one that served to communicate his cooperative attitude rather than to contribute any substantial message, as it was crystal clear he wasn’t in a position to say no. Afterwards, he choked again, a dry, scorching reminiscence of the hurt his throat had been exposed to. 

He was greeted with Brandon’s pitiful, consistently condescending look. Fixated on his own reflection in Brandon’s eyes, the sorry, miserable existence which took up way too much space than it had any right to, it took Jamie a while to realize his face was all wet with tears.

It was most likely that those weren’t even emotional tears, unless one counted intense physiological response to unexpected danger as emotional. On a cognitive level, Jamie knew that he had been through a shock and there were no rights and wrongs in how he reacted to that. Still, this awareness, this voice of reason wasn’t enough to prevent his inner red alert light department to be set ablaze.

_No… no, no, no, no, just no, please, anything but this. I’ve ridiculed myself enough. I’ve made enough of an idiot of myself. Don’t let him see me cry. Don’t let him see how this affected me. I can’t show him any of this. Not now. Not ever. But especially not now._

Yet, not surprisingly, this kind of panicked thought process in effect only kicked in a proper drama spiral: he panicked about the drama, so the drama intensified, which in turn strengthened the panic. 

Feeling a familiar, unimaginably humiliating flood rush up through his stomach and chest all the way up to his eyes, Jamie bit his lips, clenched his fists and stopped his already shallow, nervous breathing in a desperate effort to prevent the disaster from happening. 

_God, he’s looking at me. I have to pull myself together. He’s looking at me and all he can see is this whiny, useless nobody… No, this can’t be happening._

His self-talk, intended as motivational and commanding, in reality only accelerated the climactic display of a fierce breakdown, complete with incontrollable sobs, incompetently muffled whimpering and an immediate fit of running nose. 

The more he tried to restrain it, the more demonstrative his crying would get. The more he tried to hide it, the more detached and disobedient his body would become, escaping his self-control with an admirable efficiency. 

People tended to think he did these things on purpose and simply enjoyed the drama, the stir he would cause with his theatrics. Nobody ever believed how painful it was to him to bear such disgrace in public. Nobody ever understood the shame of the unwittingly judgmental looks of the well-intentioned bystanders embarrassed to even be there. 

After an awkwardly long while, Brandon found a perfect way to sum it all up. 

“Jesus, you’re pathetic.” 

Not that he seemed very much worried or troubled by Jamie’s display of hysteria. If anything, he was disgusted. And bored, waiting for Jamie to pull himself together so that they could move on with the business. 

The worst case scenario would be to keep crying, or even to amplify the crying, in a direct reaction to Brandon’s callous remark. And yet, knowing himself, Jamie really couldn’t expect from himself anything better. 

Luckily, however, it turned out this wouldn’t be the case this time. In fact, Jamie could feel himself grow numb over an instant. The streams on his face froze and then dried just like that. It was as if with Brandon’s insult Jamie had reached the critical point past which there was no feeling anymore, no suffering, no storm on the inside, only that sore, itchy sensation like he had run a marathon and was now on the verge of exhaustion. 

Maybe it was simply too much. Not just of the strain of the moment, but of this whole day, of this string of disemboweled hours during which more things had gone wrong than Jamie was capable of computing. 

So, although he replied nothing to Brandon’s remark, in no time Jamie calmed down. His breathing had grown steadier, his mind had become quieter, silent even.

Still not saying anything, Jamie wiped his face with the back of his hands, and reached to the bed shelf for a tissue. Blowing his nose and further wiping his face, he tried not to think of the gorgeous sight he must have become falling apart like that, drowning in mucus and other kinds of facial secretion. 

He took a couple of deep, steady breaths, cleansing himself from the tension on the inside. He wanted to make sure he cut himself off from all the stormy feelings that may still have been sizzling under the calm surface. Over the last twenty four hours, he’d certainly had more than a fair share of trouble caused by his feelings.

Afterwards he got up, his damp, reddened eyes fixed on the floor, and somewhat robotically he trudged into the living room. Brandon followed in his footsteps. 

Jamie could feel Brandon’s incessant glare on his hands as he sat at the desk, unfroze the laptop and logged in by entering the password he had changed. All the while, Brandon kept staring at his movements like he wanted to burn a hole in Jamie’s fingers, making Jamie feel like some kind of thief.

Which in a way, harsh truth be told, he actually was. 

Bracing himself not to think about the embarrassment and defeat he was putting himself through, Jamie peeked at Brandon questioningly, without words asking him for further instructions. He paid attention not to look Brandon in the eye – he didn’t have the courage to. He felt exposed enough, judged enough, annihilated enough anyway.

Brandon leant against the nearest living room wall, his arms folded in a nonchalant boss-like manner. 

“Go ahead, change it”, he prompted Jamie with a tone that could well have been used by a bullying manager to a company scapegoat, at once imposing and careless. 

And while Jamie’s body was still right there, in New York City of September 2011, his inner self had swiftly moved back in time, turning him into a scared little boy, too awkward to be true and persistently doubting his every move, his every thought, his every perception even. 

He could feel his hands get sweaty, his barely placated bloodstream picking up the speed yet again. He had to take his hands away from above the keyboard and shove them under the desk, afraid that otherwise his fingers would start to tremble and begin to audibly hit against the keys. 

The deafening silence carried on, and so did the empty space inside Jamie’s head. With every passing second, through the mute air around them, Jamie could hear Brandon’s voice telling him harshly, unrelentingly straight into his head: _You stupid, stupid idiot, you just can do nothing right_. 

Breathing slowly and heavily, pinning his eyes on the suddenly funny frame of Brandon’s keyboard, Jamie held on to the last shards of focus like a shipwreck survivor would to the last piece of lumber afloat. _Change the password, change the password_ , he kept repeating to himself like a magical sanity-saving mantra, and finally, with a healthy dose of wavering and blundering intertwined with Brandon’s not-so-subtle annoyed gasps, he managed to open the change-your-password window.

Upon completing this single challenge, Jamie had been thinking it should get easier from then on. Once he saw the window, however, he realized he still wasn’t sure what to do, or what it was exactly that Brandon expected him to. 

As Brandon, obviously, wasn’t in much hurry to come to Jamie’s aid with any form of suggestion, Jamie had to find it in himself to fight the horrendously sore lump in his throat and ask straight up, stammering and faltering and changing his mind as to the specific content of his question with every single word he uttered:

“Do you…do you want me to… I mean, would you like me to set up a new one?”

Not impressed by Jamie’s brave display of initiative, Brandon snorted, instantly making Jamie realize that his considerate offer was beyond stupid, to put it mildly. 

“Sure, perfect, why don’t you, I’m just dying to have you tamper with my shit some more.”

Ridiculed and at the same time confused as to what he should do, then – what it was that Brandon _wanted_ him to do – Jamie remained motionless at the computer, nervously staring at the desk, cautiously keeping his head low, feeling disempowered and unworthy to look up.

He stayed petrified like that until he could hear Brandon’s exasperated gasp. 

“Geez, seriously? What the hell are you waiting for?”, he hissed angrily, to the increase of Jamie’s panicked confusion. 

As Jamie found himself unable to respond, looking through the emptiness of his brain for any sort of reasonable answer, a disapproving click of Brandon’s tongue resounded in his ears, followed by a resolute mockery:

“So you were smart enough to crack the password, and now suddenly you’re too much of a blockhead to change it?”

Once again, Jamie had gone all still on the inside. The sadness expected to be felt at having been repeatedly insulted like that had all been pushed aside, replaced by the unnerving sense of an imminent threat.

The blood rabidly pumping up in his veins. The muscles all freezing in tension. The alertness that made it seem like the world had stopped spinning. It took Jamie a while to realize his body was expecting, and preparing for, another attack. 

The discovery came upon him right on time. It was just about enough to get him prepared, as much as it was possible under the circumstances, for when Brandon approached him and with a firm move of the elbow pushed him out of the chair to take his place in front of the computer. 

As Jamie was struggling with the dull pain below his ribs and the strained feeling of anticipation what else, what worse, might still happen, Brandon just kept rolling his eyes, sighing disapprovingly while he proceeded to type the new password.

Standing by behind Brandon’s back, Jamie looked on wearily with the corner of his eye, waiting for the fuse to blow. He knew it was a matter of seconds. He had been too startled and too nervous to type the old password, and he knew he couldn’t escape Brandon making an issue out of it.

And he wasn’t wrong at least about this, although ironically, here he wished he would.

“What’s that? An amnesia attack? Where’s the challenge in typing that password of yours?” Brandon’s voice was sarcastically indifferent, but from the way he didn’t bother to look Jamie’s way, from the theatrically curious stare he gave the empty ‘current password’ window, Jamie could tell fairly easily that his eyes were plain seething.

The intimidating intensity of these eyes made Jamie back away – quite literally, by taking a step back. 

“No… nothing, it’s just that…”, he tried to explain with his typical stammering credibility. 

Brandon took his time responding to Jamie’s embarrassing himself. He let Jamie carry on with the unconvincing mumbling for a while before he tilted his head to the side and gave Jamie a bored, slanted look.

“What?”, he finally cut Jamie’s streak of nonsense.

It was only then that it dawned on Jamie how Brandon might have been interpreting his words and actions, or rather inactions, right now. 

Jamie was being all confused because he was scared and ashamed, but Brandon probably didn’t know that. All that he knew was that Jamie had been nasty to him, nasty enough to break into his computer and violate his privacy. What reasons, exactly, did Brandon have then to believe Jamie wasn’t just playing about with him, keeping him on the hook by refusing to change the password, all the while acting all innocent and clueless?

Once again, Jamie’s inner defense systems started to ring that upsetting alarm, making him experience the real and dire need of taking action while unfairly giving him no idea as to what that action should be.

“I don’t know, I just…” He faltered, he paused, he took a deep breath and intended to try again, although he knew that no amount of stuttering would get him anywhere if he had no words to say about what he truly was thinking, feeling and doing – and even if he did have them, there was no way he could honestly convey that to Brandon.

Expectedly, Brandon eventually lost his patience and the fuse blew. Luckily for Jamie, the explosion was small-scale and the damage was minimal. 

What happened exactly was that Brandon grabbed Jamie by the wrist and pulled it forcefully to the keyboard, and then growled a no-nonsense “Type it!” command straight into Jamie’s ear. Probably just so that there would be no misunderstandings, just to make it impossible to get wrong even for a dimwit such as Jamie.

It could have turned out much worse, then. It certainly wasn’t anything remotely bad compared to being subjected to unheralded chocking. It actually made Jamie wonder, _Is that it?_ , although he obviously refused to test his luck and Brandon’s sparse reservoir of patience, so he filled in the password blank with no further ado. 

Finally content, Brandon nodded and seated himself more comfortably in the chair. He extended his elbows in a manner broad enough to manifest a border Jamie wasn’t welcome to cross.

Jamie obediently moved back, but that itself was too little for Brandon, who subsequently went a little more explicit with his wishes.

“And now get the fuck out of here”, he demanded with a quiet tenacity, his eyes already fixed on the screen and disregarding of anything related to Jamie.

Hurtful as Brandon’s words had been, not to mention the absurdity (was Brandon really ordering him around in his own house?), it was to Jamie’s own surprise how readily he followed that instruction and locked himself away in the bathroom. Still, at least he knew that his reaction made a decent amount of sense. The air in the room was getting so thick it almost made him suffocate in as physical a way as a while ago, and his self-defense instincts, however meager their levels might have been, discouraged him from staying in Brandon’s way any second longer. 

In spite of his currently calm demeanor, Brandon was clearly on the edge, his self-control disrupted by the damage Jamie had done to his privacy. Jamie knew he would better stay away and not check what could still happen if he kept irritating Brandon with his presence.

Also, the bathroom was a good place to be right now, perhaps the best available, as the prolonged sense of danger, the assaults – both actual and potential – and the heavy aura of hypervigilance and mistrust made Jamie seriously sick in the stomach.

Vomiting would bring him relief, but he was already sure it wouldn’t come to that. That was the way his body worked: it never showed to the outside what was going on on the inside. It should have made Jamie happy to have such a strong and resilient body, but instead, it usually only brought him misery, rendering him unable to convince others that he was going through hell as opposed to a bad case of hysterical self-indulgence. 

What it all came down to, then, was to wait it out in the bathroom. Wait until he could pull himself together, wait until Brandon regained his composure and could be reasoned with in any way. 

It wasn’t like Jamie had infinite time on his hands, he remembered as he entered the shower, using the warm stream of water to rinse away all the dirt and disgrace from the hours gone by. The sound of the water muffled his sobbing, the droplets on his face mixed merged with his tears that had spontaneously appeared out of nowhere as soon as he closed the door behind him. 

Yes, his time was limited. He had now less than an hour to get himself cleaned up and leave for work, but it wasn’t just that.

Right now, he was overpowered with the sorrowful sense of running out of time in more than just one way.

***

As far as work was concerned, Jamie had assumed that Monday, September 12 would be a day straight out of hell for him. He was pretty justified in these expectations, too. He was shaken and insecure; he had just been through a sleepless night; his life was overturning and he felt he had no control of it whatsoever.

He was in it for a rather pleasant surprise once he arrived at his clinic and discovered that if anything, he felt energized and relieved to be there. And he was that way for a reason. He was surrounded by familiar faces, by people and animals who trusted him and looked up to him. Here, he knew the drill. He knew what to do to help and console those around him. 

Most importantly, he could be himself. He could still be about good enough even if he didn’t try super hard.

Suddenly, his workplace appeared to him as some kind of earthly paradise. Unknowingly, he found himself in a hyperactivity mode, doing twice as much and enjoying himself twice as much as he normally did. He socialized with the interns; he comforted the screwups; he engaged in small talks with his patients’ owners. 

By afternoon, it occurred to him he was consciously keeping busy to guard off the harrowing thoughts of what had happened and what would await him at home once he had to get back there. This realization didn’t stop him from carrying on with his arduous attitude. If anything, it only made him approach it more consciously. 

If this was what let him feel good about himself and forget about the disaster in the background for a while, he couldn’t let it slip like that.

Yet, the evening approached faster than Jamie could have imagined. As the end of his shift had drown uncomfortably close, he found himself earnestly regretting there were no chances for any overtime hours that day, no prospects of becoming a last-minute stand-in for, say, a night shift colleague who suddenly called in sick. 

Jamie did know that being in the state that he was, he should decline any such requests anyway. He did predict that staying at work any minute longer would make him a hazard to himself and, worse still, his patients. And yet, at the moment there was no greater blessing in the world available to him than to stay occupied, to keep out whatever he might be thinking and feeling.

Eventually, the time to go home had arrived, finding Jamie in a place where he wasn’t sure if home was really the name he should call the place he was about to return to.

His lonely subway ride felt heavy and exhausting, each second reminding him of the bleak shambles that awaited him at the finish line of his journey. After the buzz of the day that had just ended, in the afterglow of the welcome noise that fought his urgent thoughts and overwhelming reminiscences away, here he was all alone again, pressed against the wall, fears and regrets surrounding him relentlessly like a pack of hungry stray dogs ready to attack at any given minute. 

And attack they did. Jamie found it difficult to believe, but it was so much harder on his way back than it had been when he was commuting to work in the morning. 

In the morning he had been in a different frame of mind, and in a markedly different shape. He had been so exhausted he could barely hold himself together, and his mind had been purged of any coherent thoughts, save for an occasional, self-soothing _I’m going to apologize and things will be okay_ , or _I’ll find a way to make it right, sooner or later, it’s going to be fine, we can make it_. 

Then, at work he had hit the hyperactive gear, and it stayed with him even after he left the clinic and got on the train. He was alone now, but his mind wouldn’t calm. If anything, in the stillness of his solitude it only yelled louder, producing countless impressions, ideas and scenarios at a time. 

The distance was appropriate now, too – the distance of time that had elapsed since the occurrences at dawn. Many hours away from the eye of the storm, now Jamie was able to look carefully at what had just happened to him and to their relationship. 

The damage was done, and the irreparability of it hit Jamie with a force not inferior to Brandon’s chokehold.

Should he even worry about the future of them together? When it had come to what had happened, should he even concern himself with things such as their future? Before wondering about their future, shouldn’t he be first and foremost anxious about his own present? 

Now that the levels of the defensive, denial-inducing survival hormones were down, Jamie had begun to understand with a cold, terrifying clarity that he was scared to come back home. He had to face it with a honest confession to his own self: he was afraid of what could still happen once he returned. He was afraid of that man that was awaiting him there, just as he was unsure of what this man was still capable of doing when he appeared to think nothing about attacking Jamie the way he had. 

Jamie was afraid for his physical safety. He was afraid in a very visceral way: this fear had materialized as the heavy restlessness of his body. It was a fear on a very basic, primal level, the kind of fear that questioned Jamie’s very survival – the kind that Jamie had hardly experienced before, definitely not with Brandon.

Brandon was out of control now, unpredictable. A total wild card, and not in a good way. There was simply no telling now what else he was capable of doing. True, Jamie may have provoked him and he may have done it in a deliberately obnoxious way, but to say that Brandon’s violent response had been an overreaction would be an understatement. 

As the train was sleepily swaying back and forth, now braking, now stopping, now jerking ahead, Jamie could sense his throat getting increasingly sore, growing so tight that mere swallowing seemed like sticking down a needle. The feeling grew worse as the connection between Brandon’s behavior and the depth of his addiction flashed on Jamie in full light. 

Until now, Jamie had thought that he was the one in control, because he had memorized all of Brandon’s possible reactions to Jamie’s intervening in his life. If Jamie pushed him too hard, Brandon would become distant, or avoidant, or mean and contemptuous, sometimes to the extent of being verbally abusive. Breaking into Brandon’s computer, Jamie had been prepared for these and nothing else. He hadn’t presumed it would come to a physical assault, or even that Brandon was capable of becoming violent like that.

Over a very short time span, it was a yet another thing that Jamie found he hadn’t known about Brandon, a yet another point that made Brandon seem like a stranger, once more driving Jamie to that horrifying question: who was the man he thought he loved? Did he even exist at all?

For now, it had somehow eluded Jamie that Brandon’s unforeseen move had been a response to Jamie behaving out of character himself, doing to Brandon something Brandon couldn’t have expected from him. They moved ahead in a ghastly sync, Jamie’s going one step too far likewise greeted by Brandon’s crossing the line. 

It was also funny, as occurred to Jamie about one station before his destination, how the ground-shaking revelations he encountered rummaging around in Brandon’s bookmarks suddenly seemed to mean so little. 

Stacks of online porn? Cybersex? Cruising? Hookers? Seriously, what did it matter now? 

Who cared what Brandon was doing with whom, or what he fantasized of doing with whom, when Jamie couldn’t be so certain Brandon wouldn’t kill him the next time Jamie did something he didn’t like?

Apparently, this addiction literally meant the world to Brandon. It was his dearest treasure. Under no circumstances would he have it exposed, or judged, or taken away from him. Jamie had found the hardest way yet that he simply couldn’t compete with that all-powerful, intoxicating enemy that was Brandon’s addiction.

Getting off of the train after that ages-long, tiring ride, Jamie could feel a crashing burden upon his shoulders that only got heavier with each step that brought him closer to home. 

Each second that drew him nearer the place where Brandon was echoed painfully in the tension of his muscles, the shortness of his breath, the wringing sensation inside his stomach.

Eventually, the rapid wave of dread he experienced as he approached the apartment complex where they lived made it glaringly obvious: he was unable to get back there. 

He couldn’t just go and walk into the house. He had to think things over. He was frantic to sort it all out now, while he still could. Or else he’d end up seeing Brandon, things would start to happen and get all out of hand again, and the deadlock would only keep getting worse. 

He sat down on the nearest bus stop bench, dragging along his feet like they had been shackled. Those happened to be the last motions he could afford for a while: the moment he was seated on the bench, he found himself petrified.

It was a purely physical experience of paralysis, one that corresponded with the way he had been feeling immobilized in his own life, stuck on a dead end he had never seen coming. 

His outward stupor was matched with the inner stillness, an ominous calm through which he could finally hear his inner voice firm and loud.

It was telling him that he should stay away from Brandon. 

It was explaining to him that Brandon wasn’t safe to be around. 

It wasn’t about love, commitment or sacrifice anymore. Jamie had to take care of himself now, because no one else would. He was the one who had placed himself on that isolated island in the first place, the distorted, paranoid world made for two. 

As he already knew, there was no telling what else Brandon was capable of. The only thing that Jamie was certain of was that when it came to covering his addiction or protecting it, Brandon would reach for whatever means necessary to safeguard the status quo.

What they had – it wasn’t love. It was nothing but a malformed idea of a relationship. They brought out the worst out of each other, and nobody could foresee where this madness would lead. 

At his core, Jamie knew exactly what he had to do. 

He had to show Brandon the door. 

The ice-cold, razor-sharp resolution grew inside him, in spite of himself, with an utter certainty that this was the right to do.

An unexpected wave of confidence washed over Jamie. For once, for a change, for the first time in weeks if not months if not years, he felt completely in control. 

With every inch of himself he sensed that the decisions were his to make, and the life was his to shape. He didn’t need to ask anyone’s permission. He didn’t need to wait for anything anyone would do. He was the boss here. The master of his own fate. 

It would be frightening, yes, it would sure as hell hurt, but this time around Jamie realized that he should have faith in his own self, faith that he would get by, and faith that he was the one who knew best how to take care of himself. 

Resolutely, he got up. He marched ahead with renewed vigor, returning on track that was leading him home. 

He was the one who had made this mess, but he also was the one able to clean it up. 

What was done was done. When there was no turning back to how things used to be, it was a man’s thing to do to face the truth and admit defeat. Or, in this case, admit that there was nothing left to save anymore.

Brandon looked down on Jamie as an indecisive wimp that could be spat on and trod upon. He definitely didn’t consider Jamie tough enough to make such a call. Well, wouldn’t he be surprised. 

The cold air of a windy September evening embraced Jamie’s face with its fresh, energizing breath. And there was something as fresh and energizing deep inside Jamie’s soul, a shy yet undeniable sense of empowerment. 

As it turned out, even that much hurt, that much terror and disappointment could be molded into strength and understanding, but only if you wanted to – only if you were really ready for it.

Reaching for the intercom, Jamie could only hope that this frail fire of confidence and courage was there to stay, to keep him strong and warm through the storms that were still to come.

*

Jamie had had it all figured out. He had known exactly what he needed to do, as well as what he mustn’t do. 

So, what it was that had gone wrong?

The truth, was the easiest answer. 

The truth was what had gone wrong. The truth that turned out too difficult to handle, after all.

When Jamie entered the apartment, all was suspiciously silent, like there wasn’t a living soul inside, although it had a human, two hamsters and three cats as its inhabitants. 

The stillness made Jamie tense and uncomfortable – strangely enough, because it wasn’t like _he had expected for Brandon to wait upon his return down on his knees, a rose bouquet in one hand and an apology card in another_ , right? – but he shrugged it away with a dismissive _He must be out doing his thing again, fucking some whore or two or whatever_.

Even so, Brandon’s apparent absence had Jamie disconcerted. Was it really that he was disappointed to find that those events that had made him feel so frail and shattered had so little effect on Brandon – not enough at least to stop him from going about his business like it had been just another day? Did it hurt Jamie to think that still, even here and now, he was losing to Brandon’s addiction? Did it upset him to know that he was merely something Brandon could take or leave with all the indifference in the world? 

Or maybe Jamie was simply unsettled because coming there, he had been in that desirable, gutsy frame of mind it had taken him so much to attain, and he had to act on the spur of the moment if he wanted to use the impetus it gave him. With Brandon not there, with Brandon keeping him waiting – _again!_ – he certainly was unable to do that.

In short, Jamie’s plans of emancipation had likely been rendered futile, the sense of control and bravery vanishing in thin air as suddenly as it had appeared.

It was joyless, always to be the waiting party. Why couldn’t Jamie be the one waited upon for a change?

Failing to notice Brandon’s coat and shoes remaining right where they usually were if Brandon was home, Jamie proceeded to the living room, only to encounter a sight that had him deeply confused.

There was a big suitcase right in the center of the room, opened wide and stacked up with Brandon’s posh shirt collection. The suitcase was accompanied by a closed but visibly stuffed travel bag, a half-open briefcase filled with Brandon’s precious vinyl discs, and a number of other pieces of elegant, typically Brandonish travel gear. All neatly arranged. All set and ready to go.

Jamie leant against the wall and blinked, too shocked to get nervous, or even to make any sense of what was unfolding right before his eyes. 

It took a few deep, unsure breaths until Brandon emerged from the bedroom, carrying a bundle of carefully folded ties in his hands. 

He gave Jamie a passing look, without acknowledging his presence in any more straightforward way, as he walked up to the suitcase and attentively placed the bundle inside.

Jamie could feel a tingling rush invade his throat and block the airflow until he was almost choking again. 

He waited for another couple of seconds, but the scene he was witnessing wouldn’t go away, which prompted him to eventually understand it was real, after all. 

Naturally, Brandon didn’t resort to explaining anything, covered in a thick cloud of silence while he moved back and forth to the bedroom, casually carrying one of his treasured belongings after another and placing each in one of the bags. 

As always, it was up to Jamie to figure things out on his own – or to ask the right questions.

The former quickly turned out fruitless, causing Jamie to look to the latter.

“What… why…” Suddenly self-conscious and clueless as to how to put in the words the most basic question of _What the fuck is going on here_ , Jamie wavered a bit until he managed to utter an admittedly oblique “Did I miss anything?”. 

Telling from Brandon’s reaction, this one was far from being the right question, or even a comprehensible one. 

He sent a bored, indifferent glance Jamie’s way, over a moment so brief it was uncertain if it really had happened; then, he resumed that unexplainable activity which, by Jamie’s standards, pretty much looked like… like _packing_.

That was when it occurred to Jamie that once more he was being treated like the invisible one, the one that wasn’t even there. This, combined with the inescapable realization that Brandon indeed was packing his bags and moving out, set Jamie flying into the emergency mode.

There went his poise and confidence, his mature certitude of what he needed to do to take care of his own business. Brandon one foot out the door and out of his life, Brandon ignoring him like he denied Jamie’s very existence had been enough to yet again reduce Jamie to a lost little boy desperate for attention. 

Jamie had to fight himself to push his own voice up the vocal chords, like he was pushing a boulder uphill. 

“Brandon, you…” _Just say it already!_ , he scolded himself impatiently when a spell of dizziness forced him to pause. “You’re not moving out, are you?”

Again, it wasn’t the brightest thing to ask – like it hadn’t been obvious from what Brandon was doing – but Jamie wanted a confirmation anyway, denial disguised as hope clinging to him like mud to shoes on a rainy alley. 

Or perhaps he naively counted that by asking a straightforward yes-no question he would elicit some explanation from Brandon. Not just a confirmation of the self-evident, but also some background information as to what had led to the present state of affairs. 

On such occasions, and on such occasions only, Brandon tended to act with an almost extreme predictability. Every single time Jamie hoped for him to respond atypically and, for example, give an informative piece of reply, Brandon would do the Brandon thing, something that Brandon did best: he disillusioned him. 

“Sure as fuck I am”, he muttered from above the suitcase, spite oozing somewhere beneath the nonchalant cadence of his phrasing. 

Upon hearing that, Jamie just stood there for a while, still waiting for that explanation he knew at this point he wouldn’t get. Then he walked heavily toward the sofa and sat down, prompted to do so by the weight of the collapsing world that seemingly out of nowhere had manifested itself back again upon his shoulders. 

“But… but why?”, he dragged on, slumping, with a blank gaze fixed on the floor, unable to look up at Brandon and confront the bored disgust on his face. 

Jamie’s question was honest. He genuinely had no idea. He had stopped following what was going on here quite a while ago.

It wasn’t supposed to be like that, was it? It shouldn’t have turned out this way. It was Jamie who should want to get rid of Brandon, not the other way round. It was Jamie’s safety that was jeopardized by Brandon’s presence. It was Jamie’s future that was endangered with Brandon by his side.

If that much was true, then why was it Brandon who was walking away?

Telling from Brandon’s smirk, however, which Jamie unwittingly saw in the corner of his eye, Brandon didn’t quite suffer from the same dilemma and had few if any qualms about what he was about to do.

“You don’t really think I can stay here any longer, do you.”

He stated that matter-of-factly, his expression and tone as bland as ever, letting Jamie know how he couldn’t care less. And yet, the mere sound of his words, the way he put them together, for a second set Jamie’s soul alight with a sparkle of hope. 

_Maybe he does feel remorseful about what he’s done_ , Jamie fleetingly pondered, or rather pledged. _Maybe he’s thinking he doesn’t deserve to stay here. Maybe he’s afraid I’m going to throw him out, so he’d rather be the first to leave_.

It was expert wishful thinking, and subliminally, Jamie recognized it exactly for what it was. Still, he couldn’t shake it off, that much welcome, although faint, sense of expectation, this sole consolation he was suddenly able to afford over the course of that day. 

“Why… why not?”, he investigated further, hoping not to let it show how hopeful he was being. 

Brandon frowned. It was gone in a flash, but it definitely was a facial expression conveying emotions – those emotions from the early morning that were still there, unfortunately for Jamie. The resentment, the exasperation, the mistrust. 

Jamie’s hope went sinking sooner than he had the chance to properly realize it had even reappeared there. 

“Because it’s sick. And a mess. And because I don’t want to.” Brandon’s articulation was calm, chilly and specific. He also emphasized his words with a glare he fixed for a few seconds on Jamie’s cowered figure before he casually resumed his packing activities. 

He meant what he said and he wanted Jamie to make no mistake about his point, too.

Unable to repress the reality any longer, Jamie didn’t bother to fight the tears predictably brimming in his eyes, or to mind the sense of shame that arose within him just as expectedly. It was deeply absurd how a while ago he had been determined to get Brandon out of the house, and now that he saw Brandon fulfilling that intention of his without being asked, he could only writhe internally and pray for it not to come true. 

Struggling with the terrible and all too familiar feelings of helplessness and abandonment, not thinking much at all about what he was about to do or say, all that Jamie knew now was he had to exert himself – to do his best just this once more to try and prevent the inevitable.

“…Don’t say that.” Once he got through that line, it all became easier. It was like he had unlocked a stream of driven pleas and wishes, allowing it to flow free. “Please, don’t say that. It’s…” At that point he wasn’t clear what it was he really wanted Brandon to know, other than how wrong he was about Jamie, or about them as a couple. He went on, nevertheless. Specific words didn’t count as much as the intentions did. “We’re… we’re not sick. We’re just… we’re a little lost, that’s all”, he insisted, merging boldly sounding inflection with an apologetic whimper, shaky from the restrained sobbing. 

The part that was at once amusing and tragic was that while he was trying to convince Brandon of the truthfulness of his words, in his heart of hearts he wasn’t as sure if he believed them himself.

As if responding to that fallacy, Brandon scoffed. This only made Jamie add louder and with a desperate overtone:

“Please give us a chance. Don’t throw us away. We can make this right.”

There he was, spelling out those things he never dared to talk about directly for fear of scaring Brandon away, of ridiculing himself, of exposing himself too much. There he was, frantic enough to talk about embarrassingly idealistic things such as ‘us’, ‘a chance’ or ‘making this right’. 

He had quickly lost the count of how many times he had repeated the word ‘please’ in the last fifteen seconds. And neither did he care.

Because anything went on a moment like this. Anything was preferable to idly looking on as the world as he knew it – the world he had gone to great lengths to build – was falling apart. 

Of course, not that he could beat Brandon as far as not caring was concerned. In fact, Brandon went as far as to explicitly make this point. 

“I’ve no idea what the hell you’re talking about. Not like I give a fuck, though.”

So all of Jamie’s desperate effort had been in vain. There was no reasoning with Brandon; there was no talking to him. Brandon had made up his mind and no force in the world could move him when he was in this state. 

Jamie jumped to his feet like the floor beneath the sofa had been set ablaze. This was a physical manifestation of the visceral sense of threat that he was facing, hardly rational, yet unbearable. 

He was overflowing with that hysterical energy that prompted him to act, only he had no idea what in the world he could do to make Brandon stay.

Eventually, the energy gushed in the form most familiar to Jamie. Tears streamed on steadily and quietly, escorted by Brandon’s disinterested, fed-up glance. By this point, however, Jamie was in too deep to worry about Brandon’s judgment. All he was capable of was to stand there, his face covered in his hands, isolated even though not alone – and to fall apart second by second as the realization of what he had done hit him. 

He finally could see his own role in all this. He finally understood how much he had hurt Brandon – worse still, that he _betrayed_ him, something he had sworn he’d never do, something he had been arrogantly confident was absolutely beneath him. 

After all this, how could he ask Brandon to forgive him? How could he expect him to trust him ever again? He had become everything he had assured Brandon he never would. He had turned out no different to all those unnamed people in Brandon’s life that had come before, all those cruel individuals who had harmed Brandon and who Jamie was supposed to be _so much better than_. 

Confronted with guilt so powerful it made him squirm, strangling with tear-smeared remorse that clogged his throat, Jamie found himself overwhelmed by the need – the urge – to honestly apologize to Brandon, straight from his heart, even if it was too late to change anything now. 

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Brandon.” 

His voice was cracking, his breathing was unsteady, and his lips were trembling from the load of unresolvable emotions. Yet, a glimmer of hope was still alive in his watery eyes when he looked up at Brandon, and so was his faith that by cracking himself open and baring himself completely before this bitter man, he could still earn his forgiveness.

Brandon effortlessly dispelled those credulous hopes with that manner of tired indifference he continuously displayed.

“Sure”, he acknowledged half-heartedly, not to say heartlessly, not once looking back at Jamie and not stopping himself from his packing chores for as briefly as a flash. 

His tone was conclusive, indicating that to him there was nothing more to be added to this conversation. 

Jamie, however, couldn’t heed this direction. There was so much more he owed to Brandon, so much to explain and to atone for. Even if he couldn’t make Brandon listen, even if he couldn’t encourage Brandon to really hear what he had to say, he still had to repent by showing he knew his error and owned up to his fault. 

“I mean it. I shouldn’t have… what I did to you was obnoxious. I don’t know what’d gotten into me. I…” For a second, Jamie wanted to dwell on how hurt and disappointed he had been feeling himself that night and how this had pushed him to commit the unacceptable. He quickly changed his mind, however, not wanting to sound like he was trying to excuse himself or seek Brandon’s understanding of something definitely not understandable. 

Instead, he decided to further assert his clear awareness of his transgression and how it couldn’t be justified under any circumstances. “I feel ashamed of myself. I really do.” Through the tear-blurred vision he could see another unimpressed smirk on Brandon’s face and this almost discouraged him from talking any more. He somehow found it in himself to pull himself together and show him his true colors, as he felt it was the least – and perhaps the only – thing that he still could do. “I wanted to make your birthday special, you know? I wanted it to be exceptional, I wanted it to be something to remember.”

“Well, congratulations, you did a great job”, Brandon sneered, all the while rearranging the clothes in his suitcase, probably out of concern not to give an impression that he was actually listening to much of what Jamie was saying.

Jamie bit his lips and shook his head. Brandon’s words hurt, but it wasn’t like Jamie hadn’t brought it upon himself by those sappy disclosures of how he had wanted Brandon’s birthday to turn out. 

“I know I did”, he muttered, clenching his fists until he could hear his knuckles crack. “I know I fucked up. I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry.” He hanged his head low, but still observed Brandon in the corner of his eye, attentive to any potential signs of Brandon’s hardened armor cracking and his derisive determination not to let Jamie close melting away.

Yet Brandon was a tough one. It took more than that before he gave in.

“Yeah, I know, you’ve kind of said it before”, he summed up Jamie’s demonstrative confessions with that adamant, irony-driven aloofness.

The colder Brandon acted, the more Jamie felt like screaming. Right now he fervently wished he had a crowbar to smash that wall of grudge and contempt that Brandon had surrounded himself with. All he was left with, however, were his own words – his imperfect, inept words to tell of his truth and draw it closer to Brandon’s. 

He knew he was doomed to fail, but despite the appearances, he, too, wasn’t the type to give up the fight before he was knocked down unconscious. 

“I… I can make it right, you know? I can make it up to you.” 

Thanks but not interested, Brandon seemed to be saying with his posture, with the blasé expression of his face, and with how he avoided eye contact with Jamie. 

The sinking feeling Jamie got made it seem like he was freefalling head-first into a bottomless pit. Dizzy and terrified, he squeezed what little strength he could still find in himself to stay focused. 

_Try harder. Harder, you idiot!_

This kind of pseudo-motivational self-talk succeeded in breaking Jamie down with a renewed stream of tears rather than boosting his confidence. Still, with his voice fighting its way up his trembling chest and clamped vocal chords, Jamie pushed with a yet another overwrought monologue. 

“Brandon, I… I’ll never do that again. I’ll never touch your stuff again, I won’t even get close to it.” Funny how he usually was a rather static guy who used gestures only sparsely if ever, and yet now the more impassionate his talk became, the more he waved around his hands and tossed his head in a virtually theatrical fashion, all against the background of a completely motionless Brandon. “You’ll have all the privacy that you want. I’m really not the kind of guy to do such crazy shit. I’ve tried it once and I’ve learnt my lesson, I swear.” With each sentence, Jamie’s voice would become more lush and vibrant, and his words more charged. This, in turn, only deepened the contrast between Jamie’s ardor and Brandon’s aloof, scornful stillness. 

This continued failure at eliciting any kind of response from Brandon caused Jamie’s ‘try harder’ mantra to wear off. His voice eventually cracked, reflecting his internal breakdown. 

“Brandon, please… Please, don’t leave me?”, he screeched, swallowing the tears and repressing the sobbing, paying absolutely no mind to his own degradation. What did it matter if he couldn’t keep Brandon beside him? What was the use of pride when he couldn’t make Brandon love him? 

He stressed his point by finally moving closer to Brandon. Desperately trying to make eye contact, he grabbed him by the hand. Internally, he winced at how wet and shaky his fingers were – it must have been disgusting to Brandon to be touched by something like that. 

As for Brandon, he winced not just internally. He pulled away and stepped back with a displeased frown, turning his head away, letting Jamie know in no uncertain terms how sickening his very presence was to him. 

The sense of utter, disgraceful defeat momentarily blacked out the vision before Jamie’s eyes.

And it was then, after a short row of tense, rattled seconds, something unexpected marked a yet another turn of events. 

Tilting his head so as to face Jamie, Brandon found Jamie’s eyes. His was still a pretty much hostile glare, and his expression was watchful and distrustful – he clearly wasn’t letting down his guard just yet. 

And then he spoke, in that peculiar manner of his chilly voice, very composed and very menacing:

“If you ever do that again, I’ll fucking kill you”.

It should have sounded like a gruesome threat – but all that Jamie could hear instead was hope and a promise. 

So now Brandon was talking ‘ifs’, which meant he considered to stay with him after all, didn’t it?

Suddenly relieved from the devastating tension, Jamie could literally hear the thud of the burden from his shoulders smashing on the floor. 

Quick to respond to what sounded like a perfect bargain, he nodded his head and wiped his soaking eyelids. Then he replied with a teary, cracking voice:

“If I ever do that again, I think I’ll kill myself first”.

And he meant it.

For a couple of seconds, Brandon scrutinized him with that opinionated gaze. His face implied he didn’t like what he saw, making Jamie feel uncovered, despicable, and ugly. ‘Be careful what you wish for’, they said and they were right, concluded Jamie as he reminisced with irony how earnestly he had been wishing for Brandon to as little as take a look at him, and now that Brandon did, Jamie didn’t like it at all.

Another pressured moment had come to pass, however, when Brandon moved away from Jamie and back to his bags, casually going ahead to unpack them.

“Fine”, was all that he had to say. 

All this – Brandon’s most recent actions as well as the whole development of this scene – made Jamie so disoriented he could hardly follow what or why was going on anymore.

_Is that really it? All solved, like nothing much had happened?_ , he asked himself helplessly, moving on to the kitchen, clinging to his faith that a cup of strong coffee would clear his head and help him figure out the mayhem. 

For quite a while, _What the fuck?_ remained the sole verbalized thought that Jamie was capable of producing. Resting with his shoulder against the coffee machine, he had forgotten that to use it was supposedly the reason he was the kitchen.

Once he regained his senses enough to remember about the coffee, he also reclaimed his need of keeping up the appearances of normalcy. If Brandon was to stay, which apparently was the case, then Jamie had an investment in keeping things reasonably usual. This was what he meant, at least, when he found himself calling out in Brandon’s direction:

“Would you like some coffee?”, mimicking the casual manner with which Brandon got around to unpacking his stuff. 

Following another second or two, which were sufficient to make Jamie wonder if he had made an idiot of himself yet again, Brandon got back to Jamie with a completely relaxed, guileless answer:

“Yeah, why not”.

Stunned, Jamie just stood there at the counter. 

Having mindlessly switched the coffee machine on, he carefully analyzed Brandon’s tone and phrasing, suspicious if there hadn’t been any traces of irony in there; _why not_ was, indeed, a question right on target. 

Barely moments ago, their world had been on the verge of falling apart, with Brandon giving Jamie a trash treatment of an unprecedented nature. So, yes, exactly, _why not_ grab a random coffee and pretend everything was alright? 

Stepping cautiously toward the living room, Jamie peeked through the door frame to make sure his perceptions of reality were more or less in synch with Brandon’s. At this point nothing would surprise him anymore, including seeing Brandon with one foot out the door while Jamie was busy making him the why-not coffee. 

Leisurely unfolding his clothes and neatly arranging them back in the closet, Brandon was, however, defying all the wary expectations. 

He went as far as to greet Jamie with a raised eyebrow and an understated, yet genuinely baffled “What?” upon sensing Jamie’s persistent gaze. 

Jamie had reached the point when the absurdity of it all made him feel like laughing. He barely managed to repress the snort and cover it up with a dumbfounded _I give up_ smile. 

Then he concluded that if Brandon was so intended on pretending nothing of any importance had happened, he might as well go along with it, and use it to find out about things that were specifically of interest to him. 

“Did you at least…” He stammered as his intuition suddenly warned him that asking this question may not be a good idea, after all. The key difference between him and Brandon was that Brandon didn’t give a damn, so by going back to normal, he simply continued to follow the path of not caring. For Jamie, however, ‘normal’ meant being overly committed, or caring too much for his own good, depending on Brandon to affirm and validate him. By now Jamie knew this couldn’t end up well. But now it was too late. He had already started to articulate the inquiry, so he couldn’t back away. “I mean, have you seen your present yet?”

Did he really want to know the answer? Damn right he did. Like memories from a different life on a distant planet, the recollection of all the effort, all the planning and all the emotions he had put into preparing that gift set now reemerged. He wanted to know if it all had been in vain.

… No, not really. He didn’t really want to know _if_ it had been in vain; all he wanted to know was _that_ it _hadn’t_. If it had come now to acting like this day had never happened, Jamie wanted to reset the time even further back – as far off as yesterday’s morning, one which had still been so full of faith and promise. 

As for Brandon, for the time being he had clearly run out of his surprise supply. He responded predictably and simply:

“No”.

_Of course not._

Fighting the clutching sensation he got on his neck again, Jamie forced himself to nod and smile lightly.

“Uh… sure. Let me know when you do. Tell me if you like it, okay?”, he struggled to reply through the shaky spells his head was giving him, and through the tremendous sense of futility of anything he could say or do. 

When Brandon felt like it, he could easily make it like the last couple of hours had never happened – but when Jamie wanted to do the same and revert the time to the point that suited his goals, Brandon refused to cooperate. 

The unfairness of it was immeasurable.

Withdrawing to the kitchen and staring blankly at his coffee, Jamie gave in to that bizarre and strangely devastating feeling that although Brandon had decided to physically stay with him, Jamie wasn’t getting him back.

***

Poisoned with the guilt of how he had violated Brandon, Jamie was sure that convincing Brandon to stay no matter the price was the right thing to do. He also didn’t question his own ability to handle whatever Brandon might still throw his way. 

And of course, secretly, Jamie wished Brandon would be captivated by Jamie’s remorse and his displayed will to compromise, which should in turn endear him to Jamie, even if just a little, and coax him into taking a step or two back from his addiction madness. 

As it turned out soon enough, Jamie couldn’t have been more wrong in his assumptions, let alone that expert wishful thinking. The days that followed Brandon’s birthday had been straight from hell. 

Not only had Brandon not moderated his sex-crazed behavior; he actually appeared to have taken Jamie’s good-willed declarations of ‘I’ll never do that again’ and ‘I’ll make it up to you’ as a permission to watch porn and cruise the chat rooms out in the open, or disappear for hours at a time without even trying to fake a reason why he had to go out. 

The atmosphere in the apartment had quickly become unbearable. Jamie began to feel like a prisoner in his own home. Brandon would lock himself up in the bathroom for hours, or stay up all night in front of the computer in the living room. Jamie’s stomach would squeeze as he stood behind the bedroom door, honestly wanting nothing more than to barge into the living room and tell Brandon to stop – and yet, he didn’t have the guts to do this.

Because, as his mind reminded him conscientiously on a regular basis, wasn’t he the one who had said that Brandon would have _all the privacy that he wanted_? Hadn’t that been the condition on which Brandon decided to stay? What right did Jamie have to complain?

Rationally, Jamie actually knew that he had all the right to do that, or even that it would be the only reasonable thing to do. He also knew, however, that the second he would express his protest, Brandon would be out the door, a knowing _I expected nothing else from you_ and _I knew you wouldn’t handle me all along_ look painted all over his smug face.

Jamie found himself in a trap then, a stalemate he himself had pushed himself into. For a while, he could see no way out of this.

So instead, he attempted to go through the motions one day or one hour at a time, telling himself that this would pass – this couldn’t last forever, could it? Surely Brandon was only testing him, trying to provoke him, and then, realizing the futility of trying to challenge Jamie, he’d give up this obnoxiousness at any time? – and that ultimately it wasn’t all that bad.

Until it actually had got all that bad.

Jamie was even able to give an exact time and place of when it had. It happened during early afternoon, barely eight days after Brandon’s memorable-for-all-the-wrong-reasons birthday. 

He got up after a particularly stressful night shift at work (of course), trudged out of the bedroom, and, still dazed and somehow nerve-wracked, he stumbled upon the sofa. He did the stumbling quite literally, painfully bruising his leg against the armrest and displacing the sofa by a few inches.

Letting out a short, reflexive curse of pain and exasperation, he grumbled internally: _I thought this day was finally over, don’t tell me it can get any worse_ , rolling his eyes in resignation while he rubbed his sore knee. 

In hindsight, he realized that if he seriously hadn’t wanted to know if it actually could get any worse, he shouldn’t have looked so closely at the sofa. But looked he had, just to correct the position of the sofa pillow that had also been crooked as a result of the collision with Jamie’s leg. 

That was when he saw something, right there in the crook between the seat and the backrest. A square object that looked like it was made of cardboard. Its color was dark muted green and so it almost blended with the navy blue of the sofa, which only contributed to the unreal feeling it the said object was pulsating with.

Consequently, Jamie stared at it for a while, mesmerized like he had seen a ghost – disconnected from the reality, floating unsteadily over the line that separated the truth from fantasy. 

At one point, Jamie could smell a staggering odor of raw human physiology wrapped around the sofa and himself, a venomous stench that contaminated all of the apartment. 

Then, it all went away as suddenly as it had appeared. The square object, however, remained right where it was, its contours getting clearer and thicker with each passing second. 

Shaky on the inside long before his mind could process his instinctual suspicions, Jamie leant over the sofa and took the object in his hand – only to throw it away immediately in shock and disgust, as if he had touched a can full of worms. 

Who would have thought that a small, innocent-looking thing like this, a half-open pack of condoms, could cause such a stir. 

Feeling sick to the point of unbelievability, Jamie sprung to the bathroom and bent over the toilet. The only reason he didn’t throw up was probably that he had had his last meal more than ten hours before and his cramped stomach had nothing left to push upwards. 

The sensations, visceral and relentless, were what fell upon Jamie first. Then there came the feelings, standalone and ungrounded, not yet tied to any specific image or thought: the rage, the humiliation, the helplessness. 

The realization, in its visualized and verbalized form, arrived last, and to the fullest impact. 

So Brandon had brought someone here – while an unsuspecting Jamie was away – and they fucked right there on Jamie’s sofa.

It had really come to that, hadn’t it?

Overpowered in a sadly familiar way, Jamie virtually crawled out of the bathroom and fell exhaustedly on the armchair – only to jump up with a shiver as it occurred to him that he wouldn’t know what had happened in that armchair last night, too. Or, really, any night before the last.

Disoriented, he looked around the apartment only to conclude that he was probably best off standing. There may have been no safe space in the apartment anymore, no such piece of furniture or square meter of any surface that had not been tarnished by Brandon’s shameless sex drive. 

Jamie’s emotions were giving him a rollercoaster ride, changing so fast he had no clue how he felt about the situation, much less what he wanted to do.

Somewhere at the back of his mind, a – surprisingly – still working faculty of sober thinking made it clear to him that Brandon’s addiction had just hit a new low, which at the same time provided Jamie with a useful label to name what he had just become an involuntary witness of. The problem was that this awareness was utterly locked in the realm of Jamie’s intellect and didn’t translate into his emotions. 

Simply put, Jamie was roughly aware of what was going on, but had little idea what he should make of it, or what he wanted to do about it. 

It was as if the levels of pain, anger and confusion that Brandon was causing him had exceeded his limits of perception, and now Jamie found himself thrown in the middle of a mayhem, twirling all over the surface and strangely still, dead perhaps, at the core.

Pulling himself together enough to take a sit in the kitchen chair (switching off the stubborn thoughts of _where else_ and _what_ Brandon might have been doing within these four walls _with whom_ ) and grab himself a glass of water, Jamie closed his burning eyes in a belief that the peaceful darkness beneath his eyelids would help him center.

Ironically, it was in the quiet darkness that the most disturbing thoughts assaulted him. Those were the clear-cut, simple messages delivered by Jamie’s inner voice in a robotic tone, like a corporal reporting to the officer on a battlefield.

_Brandon has no inhibitions now, has he._

_He must be thinking this place is his private brothel._

_It’s me, I guess. It’s me who allowed him this kind of thinking. I let him cross all the boundaries. And I made him believe he was still doing me a favor, because at least he stayed here._

_Because of me, he believes he can get away with everything._

_What have I done?_

Jamie shook his head, got up and grabbed a cat into his lap to soothe himself. The warm, soft presence of a grateful, touch-thirsty creature tied him back to reality, reminding him that he wasn’t a shipwreck survivor on an alien planet, after all – that he was still right there and then on the planet Earth, isolated and despondent as it may have seemed.

Breathing steadily, eagerly running his fingers through Jumba’s thick fur, Jamie resumed his thought process. In the face of disaster that was unfolding right before him, his mind remained strangely, unnervingly calm. 

_Never mind what I have done. Blaming myself won’t get me anywhere._

_Instead of looking back, I should rather ask myself what I will do. The fact is, Brandon is out of control, and I have no idea how to stop this._

_I don’t want to… I can’t kick him out, even though I should. This isn’t what you do when you love someone._

That was the point. Self-defense logic clashed with Jamie’s deep-seeded notions of enduring, unconditional love. He felt that if he broke up with Brandon now, it would testify that his love for Brandon wasn’t real after all, just a product of a self-made fantasy he backed out from once things had started to get rough.

_You don’t go throwing somebody away when the chips are down just because it’s not convenient to you anymore. That’s not what love’s about. That’s simply wrong._

Jamie exhaled heavily, as somewhere inside himself he realized how difficult it was being right now for him to find any part of himself that actually loved Brandon at this very moment. Love wasn’t much of a motivation to keep Brandon around when Jamie was having such a hard time remembering anything that made him love Brandon in the first place. And conversely, his mind was flooded with the images that made Brandon seem disgusting and unlovable, the images of dirty sex with random people all over what was, after all, _Jamie’s own private territory_. 

Frankly, if Jamie had his way based on the way he was feeling about Brandon right then, he would choose never to see him again. The mere thought of his sight, of his presence was making him sick.

Yet he was aware that these were but emotions stirred in the heat of the moment, and that he would come to regret all the nervous irreversible moves he might conduct as a result. He had tried that a number of times before, and he had learnt it didn’t work. Just like the very last time, when he had made an apparently rational and conscious decision to throw Brandon away after the birthday incidents, only to come howling and whimpering at Brandon’s feet begging him to stay as soon as he was confronted with the impending reality of Brandon moving out. 

He knew better now. He knew that if getting rid of Brandon had been that easy for him, he would have done that a hundred times before. But ‘getting rid’ wasn’t going to get him anywhere. It wasn’t what you did to a loved one just because things started to get inconvenient. Love meant being there also, or especially, when it was painful; love meant sticking together, having each other’s backs precisely when the rest of the world had turned their back on you.

And love Brandon Jamie did, even if on moments like this it was increasingly difficult to remember why it even was the case. 

He wasn’t running away. He wasn’t leaving things to keep happening. He was bringing Brandon back, the Brandon that he loved and appreciated, the Brandon that had made him feel so good. 

He _would_ come up with how to achieve that. He had to trust himself, he had to have faith that he would, even if precisely nothing in the world indicated he had any chances to succeed. 

He _could_ make this happen. That would be the right thing to do – as well as what he chose to do. 

*

Jamie eventually gave up on any ideas of the ‘serious, angry discussions’ on what Brandon had been up to in the apartment. The experience had already taught Jamie on many occasions that if these discussions led to anything, it was making Jamie feel even worse – even more powerless, unimportant and uncared for – than the inciting event itself. Why not spare himself the struggle, then?

He did try tentatively to at least mention the topic. He somehow sensed that not acknowledging it at all would be like giving Brandon a full-on permission to keep doing these gross things, perhaps even like contributing to them through his own indifference. He also felt that by simply talking about this, by bringing the topic out of his head and into reality, he would make this thing more real, no more an apparent product of his twisted mind and overzealous imagination.

So, bearing in mind the hard lessons he had been taught over the course of their relationship so far, Jamie did the said mentioning in the least confrontational way possible. 

So instead of being verbally upfront and instantly uncovering his cards, this time he chose to approach Brandon at Brandon’s most unexpecting. 

In accordance with what had become his daily routine, Brandon was chilling in front of the TV with a beer in his hand. He looked sleepy and fatigued (which was no wonder, was it? All those sleepless nights and over-excited days, and there were only so many whores you could fuck over the course of your day… poor Brandon, it must have been so hard to be such a perfectionist in every single area of your life, sneered Jamie internally, getting even at least in this cowardly way in the safe privacy of his mind), paying no attention to Jamie wandering around in the living room. 

Truly, it was infuriating how Brandon was able to unwind like that, to keep it so casual, so innocent even. Like nothing much had happened, like he had done nothing wrong. Or maybe to Brandon reality was precisely that? Maybe all the illicit, perverse backstabbing he’d been up to had become so normal to him he couldn’t tell normal everyday life from the duplicitous insanity anymore. 

Drawing closer to that polluted sofa, Jamie stopped at about two steps away from Brandon’s side, like he really had been afraid the sofa was radioactive and capable of harming him. 

Sensing his presence, Brandon gave Jamie a quick, lazy glance with the corner of his eye, not even moving his head, before he returned with his full attention to the TV screen. 

It was, in a way, disarmingly pathetic how Brandon had grown used to ignoring Jamie, and how Jamie had grown used to being ignored.

“I believe these must be yours”, announced Jamie quietly, pulling the wretched cardboard package out of his jeans pocket, internally still wondering if he shouldn’t have worn disposable gloves before he even touched that unholy artifact. 

Expectedly, this gesture did spark Brandon’s interest. 

He raised his eyebrows as he looked at the package in vague disconcertion. Then he looked at Jamie questioningly, and although he must have tried to retain his usual complacent look throughout, Jamie could sense the tension and uncertainty beneath that jaded expression.

“Well… Yeah”, was all that Brandon said after a couple of seconds of deliberation before he hesitantly reached out and took the package out of Jamie’s hand (probably in the last possible moment before Jamie’s skin caught scabies and started to get itchy in an involuntary allergic reaction). Yet, Jamie could hear Brandon’s inner voice inside his own head with an astonishing clarity, talking quite loudly and quite a lot, quite unlike Brandon.

_What is he going to do now?_ , asked that voice in an agitated, uptight tone. _Will he give me hell now that he’s found out? Will he kick me out? Will he beat me up and make me feel like trash_? It all sounded like music to Jamie’s self-esteem-deprived self.

Brandon _was_ capable of being anxious, after all. He _was_ capable of feeling powerless, weak, dependent on another and their whims. At this point of their relationship, it was a truly intoxicating kind of revelation to Jamie. 

To think that he had just led Brandon to those feelings, in an insubstantial but still sweet payback, felt to Jamie like a small victory.

In this small game of theirs, now Jamie was the master, Jamie was the one in control.

And he derived an admittedly passive-aggressive pleasure from keeping Brandon guessing, from dressing this confrontation up in the casual, laid-back clothes in place of the usual high stakes drama. 

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t throw your stuff around like that”, he followed in the same vein, talking about the body of proof that Brandon was (not so) secretly having sex with other people right there on that sofa just like he had been talking about leaving around empty beer bottles or dirty dishes. By the same token, he scored additional points for subtly reproaching Brandon’s pedantic, obsessively orderly self for making mess. 

Apparently, it was all so much effective than when he poured it all out earnestly and literally. Understatement was everything. 

It was surprisingly a lot of fun to take a difficult, painful thing and pretend it was no big deal and that it didn’t bother you, all the while watching the other party writhe in anxiety and confusion. Now Jamie could see why Brandon went for it every time and enjoyed it so much. 

Holding in all of the thoughts that made Jamie feel so powerful at his expense, Brandon eventually responded with a matter-of-fact:

“Okay, I will”.

As it turned out, that was about all that there would be to their conversation. 

The initial balloon of Jamie’s self-satisfaction had inflated to its limits, and then it just let the air out with a shrill screech, ending up flaccid on the floor.

Jamie wondered what had gone wrong this time. One second he was feeling so confident, almighty even, and the next thing he knew everything was back to normal, with a withholding, unapproachable Brandon as well as himself without a clue what to do, how to act in this increasingly weird situation. 

Had he handled it wrong, again? Had he fallen in his own trap by tacitly expecting Brandon to show some remorse, or any kind of self-criticism, or at least the tension induced in him by having been discovered like that? 

None of these things would happen, naturally. The panicked inner voices of Brandon had all been in Jamie’s head, never getting any further than that.

So perhaps they had been but a byproduct of Jamie’s overgrown imagination, like many other things related to Brandon had before. Maybe Jamie had only seen and heard what he wanted – and now reality caught him like it always would. 

And what that reality presented to him with cruel nonchalance was a perfectly calm, self-satisfied Brandon against his own disgraced, increasingly restless self. 

And Brandon underscored this reality by looking right into Jamie’s eyes, commenting on Jamie’s prolonged, silent staring with a humiliatingly light-hearted reminder.

“What? I thought you wanted me to keep things on the safe side.”

It was a slap in the face of a callback to Jamie’s earlier insistence that Brandon have only protected sex under any circumstances. 

And Jamie couldn’t help but admire Brandon’s impeccable hyena instincts, lurking in the shadows whenever feeling insecure and coming out to attack as soon as he smelt the blood. 

Before Jamie knew it, the paradigm had made a 180 degrees shift. No later than a couple of weeks before Jamie had been certain he was in a monogamous relationship, and now here Brandon was, talking about sleeping around with other people, right there in Jamie’s apartment, like it was no big deal, something completely normal, something completely reasonable. 

The most miserable part was that Jamie couldn’t do anything about it. Although a deeply resonant voice inside him was screaming a whole tale of how much of a dick Brandon was, how he was a sicko who should never be forgiven for what he was doing, Jamie’s lips were sealed. He could only stand there and watch Brandon’s basking in the smooth, self-satisfied experience of his own impunity, granted to him by none other than Jamie himself.

Suddenly Jamie saw that he had to deal with a whole system of interdependent feelings, actions and behaviors: whenever he attempted to change any specific part of the mechanism, the other parts would automatically come rushing to correct what he had tampered with. 

It was all either-ors, no shades of grey in between. His choice was either to kick Brandon out or to put up with the intolerable. He already knew he was incapable of the former – so did that mean he was forced to meekly go along with the latter?

…No way it did. Life wasn’t a black and white matter, not the kind of life that Jamie lived and believed in. 

There had to be a third way, or maybe a fourth or a fifth or even more. Just because it didn’t occur to Jamie at the given moment it didn’t mean it didn’t exist. 

And so this was how Jamie spent the next couple of days, painstakingly figuring out the said third way, patiently bearing the uncomfortable atmosphere after that another ‘confrontation’ of theirs bore no conclusions, more than likely meaning that Brandon carried on with his insufferable behavior free of any cares and concerns, as Jamie had given him precisely no reason not to. 

Patience was Jamie’s strong suit, after all – and so was endurance. 

As it turned out, yet again these virtues didn’t fail him, revealing to him soon enough that the third way had been there all along. He only had to open up his mind and realize that Brandon wasn’t the person he should take on as a partner in these crisis negotiations. There had been a third party – a first party actually, if one considered its importance – and this was the person that Jamie was supposed to deal with during this deadlock, rather than Brandon himself.

That was when Jamie began to prepare for his encounter with little Brandon.

***

In a moment of weakness – quite a few moments were they, honestly – Jamie may have had a hard time remembering why he loved Brandon at all; but just by thinking about little Brandon, by getting to know him inside his own head, it was all remedied. 

How could Jamie not love a man who had used to be this sweet, vulnerable child, once hurt and abused by somebody close to him in a cruelest possible manner? 

To think that his child was still inside Brandon: gagged, tied up, deprived of warmth and light and human touch, mistreated by the present-day Brandon himself the way the trusted adults around him had shown him to. A love-starved little boy who had been put through so much pain and who was so paralyzed with fear of the outer world that there was no way he could reach out, no way for him to let anyone know how much he needed to be noticed, affirmed, taken care of.

Being close meant pain. Trusting meant betrayal. Dependency meant being used. Those were the lessons life had taught little Brandon early on, and he sure was a good student. He knew exactly what to do not to allow any of that hurt happen to him again.

Once Jamie had adjusted himself to that ‘little Brandon’ frame of mind, everything about Brandon and their relationship had started to make sense again. Finally, it wasn’t all about Jamie anymore, not about his deficiencies, insecurities and being not enough for Brandon. He suddenly remembered he was dealing here with something so much bigger than just himself.

From then on, every time he looked at Brandon, he saw more and more of that scared, tormented, yet resilient boy inside him. And he would naturally come to love them more and more with each glance – both the little Brandon and the grownup one.

Before he knew it, Jamie found himself devoting most of his time thinking about that boy. He tried to picture what little Brandon may have been like underneath that ice cold exterior of Brandon. 

In many a spare moment, he conducted fantasy conversations with the boy, trying to get to know him better – what it was that he liked, what it was that he didn’t, what hurt him, what were the means to make him hope and trust again. Soon, Jamie had begun to feel like he had always known the little Brandon, like he had been his friend, a guardian figure of sorts, a kind of an older brother. 

He gave it his best to make the little one feel safe and cherished, to let him know no harm would fall upon him as long as Jamie was by his side. He was rewarded with little Brandon’s faith in him, as the boy gradually and smoothly revealed to Jamie the horrible things he had somehow survived. 

Little Brandon usually wouldn’t speak in the open about what exactly had been done to him, or if he did, his stories were often incoherent and had multiple versions. That was alright. He was only a child, after all. It was only natural if he didn’t have the words to describe what exactly had happened, or maybe even a mental capacity to define and assess precisely what kind of abuse he had experienced. It didn’t matter. What mattered were the emotions that it all had stirred within the child and the poisonous beliefs it had borne, and those he was able to convey to Jamie pretty reliably. 

Despite the obvious mistrust and suspicions on little Brandon’s part, he and Jamie quickly began to get along well. Jamie could understand him effortlessly, guessing the boy’s thoughts and internal states in advance in that older-brother-like manner. 

Then again, maybe it wasn’t all just thanks to Jamie. Maybe it was the little Jamie inside him that had all the answers, all the best ideas on how to be the little Brandon’s friend.

Although Jamie did have some vague ideas about the little Jamie’s role in all this, he chose not to dwell on them. It wasn’t the time and the place for him to be the kid. He had to be the dependable, responsible grownup for Brandon’s and his own little one’s sake.

And little Brandon truly was a wonder. He was smart and resourceful, and pretty precocious. He had learnt better than to trust adults and he had been out there in the world all on his own, which made him pretty self-reliant, confident in his comprehension of the external circumstances and the worldly know-how. He had this well-prepared tough guy exterior, and in those narrow smirking lips and proud, distanced eyes of malachite green Jamie could see a clear reflection of the man he would become in the future. 

Naturally, Jamie had known all along it was all just a front, a chainmail woven not to let anyone too close, not to remember the stinging hurt that allowing anyone close would inevitably bring each single time. 

Undeniably, there was a genuinely childlike quality underneath that chainmail, a boyish charm and innocence that little Brandon involuntarily displayed every now and then, be it with a mellow sprinkle of laughter, a flash of a gorgeously unselfconscious smile, a spontaneous exclamation, a reflexive gesture. 

He definitely was a child at his core, and that child had to be restored, brought back to life full time, if the grown up Brandon was ever to be whole again. 

It was a tough job, working on the little Brandon so that he would let down his guard. Jamie realized he had few arguments to convince him it was okay to open up, to relax, to be the child for once. What reasons had the little guy to trust him anyway? Jamie was just another adult in his life, after all, all set to manipulate him and exploit him in case he gave up as much as an inch of his control. 

Jamie realized, then, that the only shot that he had was to show the little Brandon that he understood.

He had to show him his compassion and his own emotional vulnerability which allowed him to feel Brandon’s fear, shame and pain with an infinite resonance. He had to prove to him that Brandon didn’t need to say anything, because Jamie understood anyway. He was right there with him, sharing his agony, dedicated to its validation and his healing. 

No, Brandon didn’t need to tell him anything at all. It wasn’t like it stood any comparison, but the fact was that in the end Jamie, too, knew very well how it felt to be rejected, abandoned, left all alone with your suffering and damaged faith in people. 

Jamie was aware he was quite good at relating to other people, at taking their experiences whatever they be and finding a common ground with his own’s. He was determined to use this power of relating now to break through adult Brandon’s and little Brandon’s defenses, breaking into their desolate souls to show them they were not alone. 

There was no better way to do that than to write a sincere, personal letter. And this was precisely what Jamie resolved to do – to write such a letter to the little Brandon. 

Once he had made the resolve, Jamie wasted no time. 

Still on the very same day, he used his work breaks to sit quietly in the solitude of his study room and figure out the outline of what he wanted to convey to the child. He had conceived a couple of rough drafts inside his head, but he wouldn’t put them to the paper yet. He wanted the thoughts and feelings first to ripe, and then to flow spontaneously as he was writing the real thing: no disguises, no preconceived notions, no rigidity in the name of an ill-conceived order. 

On his way back, he stopped by the stationery shop he was a regular at, and got a letter paper set especially for the purpose of writing this letter to the little Brandon. It was cute and stylish at the same time, colored in pastel green and pale beige, patterned with kittens and mice – Jamie knew that underneath that tough guy exterior, little Brandon was a kind-hearted boy who loved animals and was very capable of caring for them, actually trusting them that much more readily than he would trust his so-called fellow humans (and did Jamie know quite a lot about it himself!), so this specific pattern seemed like an accurate choice. An optimum solution, one would daresay, striking balance between the little Brandon’s grownup demeanor and disregard for all things ‘childish’ (innocent), ‘silly’ (playful) and ‘pathetic’ (vulnerable) on the one hand and the undeniable fact that he still was just a little boy on the other. 

Frankly, in his heart of hearts Jamie was sure this letter wouldn’t be the last – that it may and should open up a whole new channel for him to communicate with Brandon through the little Brandon. Thus, he wasn’t exactly concerned that his letter paper purchase would turn out a one-off, disposable deal. 

When he returned to an empty apartment – in late afternoons it had become a regular occurrence these days, and it had come to such a point when Jamie was grateful that Brandon would do whatever business he had away from home rather than have the ‘business’ come over – and sat down to have his after-work coffee to go with dinner that Brandon had left for him in the kitchen (funnily enough, no matter what was going on between them and how awfully Brandon was treating Jamie at the time, he hardly ever neglected his self-imposed local chef duties – to the extent that Jamie wished he could still be naïve enough to take it as a sign that Brandon cared about him in any way), Jamie started to get fretful about how he should start his letter, or, precisely, how he should address the boy.

Somehow, simply writing ‘Dear little Brandon’ made an artificial and confusing impression. The phrase seemed rather out of place. It wasn’t the way you’d address an actual living child in your life, was it? And Jamie wanted it to feel actual, to feel real – because that was exactly what it was, _real_. Little Brandon was a _reality_ for both Brandon and for Jamie himself, even if the former for his own reasons chose to repress or deny that reality. It made it all the more important for Jamie, then, to open up his letter in as personal a way as possible.

He wanted to call the little Brandon the way he would call a real, physical, materialized child that he loved and held dear. He knew he had to come up with a special name for the boy, a pet name, something affectionate and sweet, something that would represent their relationship and Jamie’s devotion to him well. 

Of course, the fact that the name ‘Brandon’ really had no conventional diminutives – as if the world itself had conspired against Brandon along with his family of origin by giving him a name that implied he should have been a grown-up all along, with no space for infantile nonsense such as pet names – didn’t exactly help. Still, Jamie decided to approach this difficulty positively, as a kind of a challenge, perhaps even a rare chance to exercise his creativity and invent something original, something that would be theirs alone, something to define them and underline how one-of-a-kind their relationship was. 

This attitude of Jamie’s was quickly rewarded, as coming up with an appropriate name eventually didn’t take much thinking on his part. When the moment was right, the name had just appeared naturally, nice and easy, all on its own.

_Branlet._

Simple, cute, rhyming with the endearing little ones just like Branlet himself: _piglet_ (like Winnie-the-Pooh’s Piglet), _owlet_ , _eaglet_ – as well as with miniscule, preciously fragile things such as _droplet_ , _ringlet_ , _islet_ , _winglet_.

Perfection. Just excellent. Now that Jamie had come up with it, he couldn’t believe it had taken him so long – he just couldn’t comprehend how come he hadn’t just known it all along, like it hadn’t always been right there inside him.

And more than anything, it sounded like him, like little Brandon’s own name. Like the name of the boy Brandon once had been. Like the name he should have been called, but probably no adult around him bothered to.

Pretty satisfied with his discovery, all on his own and rather confident he wouldn’t be disturbed in his solitude anytime soon, Jamie sat down comfortably by his bedside table and took a piece of paper to write the draft of his letter.

The letter that at the time felt to him like the most important message ever written in the history of mankind, as well as the most private, most intimate, and most heartfelt thing to have ever been put to paper.

The words flowed, uninhibited, and Jamie flowed along with them. It was as if he had been synchronized with the paper in front of him and the pen in his hand, three separate entities forming a perfect union to transcend the limitations of the here and now to reach that frightened New Jersey kid sometime around the year 1990. 

When Jamie read the finished draft before copying it to the letter paper, the results astonished him to quite an unexpected degree. 

He had barely finished the writing. Those were his own words and they still rang fresh in his memory. Each single word and sentence had been conceived, selected and put together intentionally and with utmost care. And yet, he had had no idea how they sounded as a whole – until he read them and let that wave of emotion, of pure, intense ardor wash him away. 

It all did seem like things he was personally able to author, like something borne out of his own mind. At the same time, however, it was amazingly true and honest, full of compassion and clarity, making Branlet and his bond with Jamie a vibrant, vivid picture shimmering with authenticity. 

Involuntarily, without even thinking of it, Jamie had created something bigger than himself, a fact which now moved him to tears. It wasn’t about Jamie being conceited and self-aggrandizing, but rather about Jamie realizing that his subconscious revealed to him the simple yet sacred truths he hadn’t been aware of inside his conscious mind. 

_Dear Branlet,_

_please allow me to write this letter to you, for I can’t think of any other way to reach you._

_I know that I can’t reach you because you chose so yourself. I know that you’re scared. Scared of me. Of the world. Of being vulnerable and exposed. I know everything about it and it hurts me to realize just how terrified you must be by my stubborn attempts to get in touch with you._

_You see, I don’t want to scare you. I don’t want to bring you pain. But I know that unless I do this, unless I take this chance risking that instead of helping you I’ll just end up making you hate me and run away, you’re never going to trust me._

_Unless I do this, you’re going to remain forever locked away on that cold, desolate planet of yours that nobody has the permission to enter. You’re going to stay there forever lonely, hurt and shivering with cold, but at least secure in the safety of your solitude._

_After all, if nobody can reach you there, then you’ll be okay, right?_

_I just want you to know that I know you’re there, no matter how hard the big Brandon has been trying to keep you hidden from the rest of the world._

_Not that I could blame him. He only does what he thinks is best for you. For both of you. At some point somebody hurt you with an unthinkable cruelty, making you forget what trust or faith in other people were. So he doesn’t want to risk exposing you to anything like that anymore. He thinks you wouldn’t survive that. (For the record, I happen to disagree. The mere fact that you’re still there, still around, proves just how strong you are. I don’t think there’s anything in the world that could actually kill you.)_

_And you trust him, because what other choice do you have? You’re certain that the big Brandon is still the only adult you can believe, the only one who isn’t out to get you. True, he may not be treating you best, but what more can you expect from an adult, right? At least he doesn’t make you do things you don’t want to. At least he’s alright and fair that way._

_Let me say it again that I don’t blame him. He only does what he thinks is best for you, in the best way he can._

_Yet, the two of you have been forced to pay a huge price for what you call safety. Perhaps neither of you have noticed that while he’s not making you do things you don’t want to, he’s also blocking your way to the things you do want and need the most._

_Like warmth. Tenderness. Honesty. Confidence. Faith in yourself. Faith that whatever you do and whoever you become, you will be accepted by those dearest to you, because you deserve this absolutely and unconditionally._

_Love._

_I can assure you that there exist no people who wouldn’t need all these things. Still, there do exist some people who for some reasons have decided that the price of these things is just too high._

_All the more so, there exist no children for whom all these things wouldn’t be their birthright. Yes, you too – especially you – deserve to have it all without as much as a shadow of doubt as to what’s going to be demanded of you in return._

_I wanted to let you know how much I admire you. You have survived things I can’t even imagine. When I think about those who have done this to you, I feel anger. I feel rage when I think about the wrongs they have inflicted on you, or about the lies about yourself they’ve made you believe in. Those nasty, blatant lies because of which now it’s you and not them who hides away like a runaway on that cold planet._

_And I’m not surprised that after all this you can’t trust me, either. Had this had happened to me – assuming I’d even survive it at all – I’d be unable to trust myself, too. The price of trust is too high. How can you guarantee I’m not exactly like them? After all, aren’t all adults just all the same?_

_You have endured so much, and you’ve been facing it for so long. You’re strong, you’re brave, you’re courageous. And now you’re also not alone, not anymore._

_I know that the mere sound of these words – “You’re not alone” – scares you deeply. But I still believe that the day will come when I can hold you and shelter you while you lean on me… and you won’t be going it alone anymore._

_I love you very much and I can’t wait for the moment when you come out, boldly, fearlessly, holding your head up. Once you and big Brandon give yourselves the chance to rewrite your story anew, things really will turn for the better._

_And I will always be right beside you, always ready to pass you a handful of new notebooks and color pens, and a wealth of ideas about brand new stories that you could write down._

_I’m sending you my hugs and kisses, but only if you let me._

_Your (and I mean both of you)_

_Jamie_

_PS Nothing that I may still learn about you could change how I feel or what I think about you._

Holding himself down to control the overflow of raw emotions, Jamie concentrated on transferring the final version of his message to the letter paper. Following this, he read the finished thing out loud, possibly as naturally and casually as he could, as if he had been speaking to someone in a conversation rather than reading. While doing so, he imagined he was talking to Branlet himself. 

He pictured the boy very clearly. He could see his thin frame clad in those worn-out, overgrown second-hand clothes, his bruised knees and scratched elbows; he could see him squint from underneath an awkward, home-cut fringe as he cautiously gazed back at Jamie. Yes, there was no mistaking. Jamie could see Branlet slouching in that chair in the bedroom corner, trying to make himself invisible by hiding behind the curtains, pretending to be all bored and indifferent, yet shaking and full of silent despair on the inside. 

Jamie himself was pretty much shaking on the inside, too. As he read the words, his voice cracked quite a few times, causing him to stop. He didn’t mind that, even when he had to wipe his own tears and wait until his breathing and his thoughts had steadied. 

It was the purifying, cathartic power of tears at work here, and Jamie didn’t shun it. He knew better than anyone that a wound had to sting as you cleaned it, but it was the only way to bring about the healing. 

He really wished – and not just wished, but also hoped, genuinely, from the bottom of his heart – that he could teach this truth to Branlet. Convince him of it, show him how it worked. 

He was able to envision the fragile, shy, but ultimately kind and loving Branlet right there in his arms, opening up to Jamie’s warmth and strong, secure embrace more and more, with each sentence stripping down from his long-lasting defenses and pretenses.

In Jamie’s mind, he was the one making Branlet strong. And in the reality outside his mind, his vision of Branlet was making him strong in return, giving him the power to get going with the difficult, exhausting task, or should he say the mission, ahead of him. 

What a perfect harmony, he thought.

He put the letter in the envelope, sealed it and placed under the sofa cushion that Brandon used as his pillow in the night. He was so excited about what this undertaking, and about the long-awaited breakthrough that was finally, inevitably on its way that this time, for the first time in what felt like months, he didn’t even find the sofa despicable with all the images of what Brandon might have been doing there while Jamie wasn’t around. 

Also for the first time in what felt like months Jamie could sleep well, the night rest time allowing him to reinvigorate himself and erase the accumulated exhaustion. 

He got up in the morning refreshed and as good as new, up for all the challenges that the day would bring and high on the sweet, intoxicating blend of expectation and anxiety flowing inside his blood.

He hadn’t heard Brandon come home in the night, but when he stepped outside the bedroom in the morning, Brandon was sleeping on the sofa, his clothes neatly arranged on the nearby armchair. He probably hadn’t found the letter yet.

His recent lifestyle patterns combined with the alleged emotional turmoil had taken its toll on how Brandon looked. His sleeping face showed obvious traces of weariness, the dark circles beneath his eyes and sharp lines running along the inner side of his cheeks making him look a good few years older than he really was.

And yet, following the last days of his vivid and powerful encounters with Branlet, Jamie was unable not to witness a shade of the kid right there in that grayish, fatigued face. Brandon’s sleeping face was exactly where Jamie could see Branlet’s innocence, his honesty and his neediness, uncovered, not held back by the adult Brandon’s constant guard. 

Driven by the protective, caring urge that had suddenly came down upon him, Jamie leant toward Brandon to pull his slightly slid blanket back up to Brandon’s shoulders. 

He did it as gently as possible, but Brandon’s alertness was stronger. When Jamie pulled his hands away, he was met with the watchful, unwelcoming gaze of Brandon’s secretive eyes, barely open, yet fully aware and ready to fight off the uninvited bedside guest whoever he may have been.

This display of mistrust bordering on hostility didn’t discourage Jamie. Quite the contrary, it endeared him all the more, as he could swear he knew what was going on inside the adult Brandon’s head when he was showing he was prepared like that to do all that he could to keep Branlet safe. 

Greeting Brandon’s eyes with no fear and no disconcertion, Jamie simply smiled a light, understanding smile and put a finger to his lips, conveying straight into Brandon’s head, with no words uttered out loud: _Shhh, it’s okay, don’t wake Branlet up_.

“Sleep tight” was what he did murmur before he backed away and carried on with his morning routine. Whatever behavior on Jamie’s part Brandon was expecting in the wake of another night that he had unabashedly spent outside, it definitely wasn’t this kind of easygoing, caring attitude. Jamie could see the vigilance on Brandon’s face momentarily give way to a look of confusion, a part which Jamie didn’t mind at all.

Actually, as he stepped away from the sofa, he had to stop himself from giggling like he had been the mischievous pre-teen here.

Little did Brandon know.

With all this sudden tenderness, it seemed as if Jamie had been oblivious to what Brandon had been up to before he came back so run down to sleep on that sofa. In truth he wasn’t oblivious at all, but now it all mattered so little and appeared to him so insignificant, so petty even. Now that Branlet was in sight, and Jamie with his own message to him was about to take the floor, Brandon’s infidelities and excesses all had been put in a perspective, exactly where they belonged.

The day at work was quite okay. This time around, Jamie wasn’t impatient and he wasn’t getting overly hyped up about a yet another alleged big breakthrough ahead of them. Perhaps he was simply more confident in his plan, confident enough to calmly wait until the time was ripe. 

Knowing Brandon, he knew it wouldn’t be all smiles and roses at least in the beginning. He was prepared for Brandon attacking him to keep up his and Branlet’s defenses; he braced himself for quite a ride while the foundations of Brandon’s glass castle of denial would be shaking and cracking before they ultimately collapsed. 

Thus, Jamie wasn’t surprised at all when upon his arrival Brandon was already lurking in the doorway, an angry frown on his forehead, and the violently folded letter in his passionately raised fist, responding to Jamie’s “I’m home” announcement with a seething:

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”.

No, that wasn’t surprising at all. Or upsetting, or, let alone, scary. Even though Jamie’s instinctual responses may have been some amount of sadness or anxiety, or disappointment that after all it couldn’t go down the easy way, he shelved them all easily.

His head convinced him effortlessly that everything was going according to the plan. And he gladly went along with the message. 

The show went on like it had to.

***

“I’m just trying to talk to you.”

That was Jamie’s reply to Brandon’s _What the fuck do you think you’re doing_ question. In Jamie’s own not so humble opinion, it was rather sensible and constructive. 

Brandon, however, was of a different mind entirely.

“Right. But why do you insist on … this?”, he spat out through a clenched jaw and with that huge, glaring frown. Jamie actually still had the nerve to consider the ‘this’ part, articulated by Brandon with such uncompromising contempt and repulsion, a little amusing. It looked like Brandon loathed his childhood story and all that came with it so much that he couldn’t, or was unwilling to, even find a proper expression to name it. 

“Because it’s important”, Jamie explained methodically, unflinching. He could still see Branlet very clearly through Brandon’s glowers, scowls and menacing expressions; he could hear him throw a tantrum through Brandon’s angry words. And he reacted accordingly, patiently clarifying the obvious exactly the way he would to a child. “Brandon, you need help, can’t you see? If you don’t make peace with what was done to you, you will never get better.”

Brandon stood still, piercing Jamie with that dirty look that Jamie recognized all too well, but this time around was too confident in what he was doing to worry about. 

“I told you to stay away from this”, uttered Brandon with a deceitful, ominous calm in his voice. 

Immersing himself in that usual crazy dance of theirs, Jamie stubbornly kept on doing what he was doing. Which, naturally, was the right thing. 

“Brandon, please, try to understand, if there was any other way I wouldn’t be doing any of this. Do you really think that I’m doing this for fun? That I’m doing this because it turns me on or because I enjoy seeing you suffer?” 

It suddenly hit him that in spite of himself and his consciously applied procedures, shades of annoyance and frustration had become to show through his voice and his wording. He took a deep breath to help himself get back on track. 

One breath in, one breath out, then another, and there he was, as helpful and Brandon-centered as ever. 

“You need help”, he repeated for roughly a billionth time that year. “And I’m going to help you find it. I’m going to help you with anything. Just say yes…please.” 

When he looked at Brandon with his full attention again, not distracted by what and in what way he was supposed to tell him, with all the grievance that came with it Jamie realized that he might as well have said nothing. 

Instead of placating Brandon, if anything, he had only managed to infuriate him even more. 

Apparently unable to contain his rage anymore, Brandon went stomping around the room, storming from one corner to another. Bad premonitions crept up Jamie’s way as his body cautiously remembered the circumstances when Brandon had attacked him on his birthday. Not really wanting to believe something like that might happen again, but not really willing to leave his own faith in Brandon’s hands entirely either, Jamie discreetly stepped back toward the bedroom door, ready to escape and lock himself inside should things get out of hand.

That precaution, however, wasn’t necessary. Brandon was the first to make a run.

“Fuck off!”, he burst out before he broke away and slammed the bathroom door. 

He might not have said much, but there had been such amounts of venom and wrath in his voice that if it had been a poison, it should have killed Jamie instantly. 

Easy does it, Jamie told himself while battling the lump in his throat. 

Sitting in the armchair with a usual comfort cat in his lap, he waited for Brandon to calm down, to do whatever he had to in that bathroom to clear up his head and get ready to continue the confrontation, because the continuation was inevitable.

Yes, Jamie did know by now that with Brandon there was no ‘inevitable’, there were no ‘musts’ and ‘granteds’. But he still hoped and believed deeply that Branlet held the key to reasoning with the adult Brandon, and now that Jamie had unmistakably reached him, even if just indirectly, even if the signal was still weak and interrupted, there would be no turning back to their stale old ways. 

Using up all of his mental strength, Jamie somehow talked himself into retaining control. He had known Brandon would be shocked and angry. He had expected Brandon to defy him. It was alright. It couldn’t change how Branlet was still right there and Jamie had succeeded in making an ever so brief contact with him. That was a fact. Nothing could take that away now. From this moment on, things would truly never be the same.

…If so, then why had all this – idly sitting there, waiting for Brandon’s answer, making himself so dependent on Brandon’s moods and whims and games – felt so old, like Jamie had been here so many times before? 

A nasty, unwanted feeling of apprehension crept up Jamie’s spine as he struggled to keep his cool through all the tension. 

The waiting predictably seemed to last forever, even though the clock showed that the time that had elapsed was contained in about twenty minutes. And when Brandon finally came out, he made it seem like Jamie wasn’t there anymore.

Brandon didn’t have to say or do anything – or maybe the fact that he said and did nothing was exactly the point. It wasn’t just that he didn’t pay attention to Jamie, he acted like he genuinely couldn’t see Jamie there. 

He would pass him by with an indifferent look pointed elsewhere, all in a very natural manner. It didn’t appear like he had tried to avoid eye contact with Jamie on purpose. On the contrary, Jamie remained very well within his field of sight, but in the fashion of a yet another award-worthy performance, Brandon skillfully pretended he was all alone in that room. 

Thus, he succeeded in achieving his alleged goal very quickly: Jamie instantly began to feel like he was invisible, like he had vanished into thin air. 

It wasn’t like Brandon showed off his anger or bitterness or resentment, or whatever other ill emotions he may have harbored toward Jamie. To the contrary, he was perfectly placid, perfectly in control. 

Jamie didn’t matter enough to upset him any longer. 

As for Branlet, there was absolutely no trace of him left whatsoever, he was nowhere in sight. Like a hunter who on a perfect occasion had struck too early or too carelessly, scaring the target away and forever losing the chance to catch it, Jamie had been too eager to show his cards. Now his straightforward strategy had failed him, driving Branlet away. 

As a result, he could be certain he wouldn’t see Branlet around anytime soon. By revealing himself to both Brandons and coming on so strong, he had put them in the red alert mode. It seemed that from now on the adult Brandon would make sure Branlet would quit prancing around in the real time and real world, never again lowering his guard enough to let his presence be known to Jamie.

Of course, it wasn’t like Jamie had given up immediately, just like that. He wouldn’t have been himself if he had. 

He tried to approach Brandon. He tried to talk to him, to address him in any way, and more than just once. He really gave it what he had.

It was just that he couldn’t find the words, or the thoughts in his mind, or the air in his vocal chords, when the other party let him know so clearly that to him, Jamie didn’t exist.

How could Jamie tell what the truth was anymore? It was his truth against Brandon’s, and right now he was getting too confused to vouch for his own point of view. 

Maybe Brandon was right. Maybe he was the one who had been wrong. Maybe he really didn’t exist, a fake creature from a fantasy world, and those who didn’t exist didn’t have a voice, either. Maybe that was precisely what made talking to Brandon so hard.

That was when Jamie finally understood that resuming the negotiations with Branlet had to wait for another occasion. Another day, perhaps. Or another lifetime.

That, and being treated like he didn’t exist hurt like the worst kind of hell.


	5. October: Stay on your island

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jamie's relationship with Brandon has clearly approached a point of no return. Standing on the crossroads, Jamie slowly comes to realize that more than his dream relationship, it's his own sanity and dignity that are at stake here.

The silent treatment Brandon had given Jamie lasted for many days. All the while, Brandon clearly paid attention not to upset the status quo and not to do anything that would compel Jamie to take drastic measures or, conversely, make himself seem like The Bad Guy. 

Jamie had learned yet again how clever an opponent Brandon was and how stupid it had been of himself to repeatedly underestimate him. Had he really been so sure that simply by targeting Branlet and bringing up to the surface Brandon’s most sensitive issues he would break him and win? Wouldn’t he have accomplished that a long time ago if it really had been that easy? 

What he _had_ accomplished instead was making himself Brandon’s enemy, and Brandon now was determined to make him pay, in that cold, twisted, unobvious way that only Brandon was capable of. 

It was clear that Brandon was now playing again that little game of ‘I’m fine with the way things are right now, and if you have a problem with this, well, that’s _your_ problem and it’s up to you to solve it’. He had set the rules whereby living under the same roof they didn’t speak with each other and took no notice of each other – and he was comfortable with it. It was _Jamie_ who wanted him close. It was _Jamie_ who wanted to live _with_ him, not _next to_ him. It was _Jamie_ who was bothered by his uncontrollable sex life. Then, it followed, it was Jamie’s problem to try and come up with anything to change the circumstances, with both of them perfectly aware that possibly he had already exhausted all conceivable ways to do that, and to absolutely no effect.

Brandon had placed Jamie in a no-win situation, and their relationship at the edge of a cliff. Jamie hardly had the courage to admit it, but he sensed it anyway: one wrong move now and this would be it.

Frankly, things had got critical enough that every move now seemed doomed to turn out wrong. If the Branlet operation didn’t work, what could? Jamie had to admit now that on the flipside of his slightly arrogant confidence in his letter to Branlet was lurking a frightened notion that this time Jamie really was out of ideas. If this plan failed to break through to Brandon, to convince him of the need – and the meaningfulness – of facing the abuse of his past, or even as much as make him trust Jamie and open up to him, then Jamie truly could think of nothing else that would make things happen. 

He was stuck. Right there up on that cliff.

He was too scared to look around and face his surroundings, too scared to look at that pitch-black pit underneath his feet and assess if there were any chances of him surviving the fall. Merely thinking about taking that step, and praying for another impossible miracle to save him, made his mind black out.

He would gladly have chosen to stay there on that rock shelf and pretend he was comfortable there, the way he had so many times before. This time, however, a slow-burning torture had crept up on him, getting increasingly excruciating until Jamie felt that he was now literally one step away from deciding that taking the fall would still be better than staying within the constraints of that cliff-edge prison.

_Can I really let him go?_

Deep inside, Jamie knew he wasn’t ready to do this yet. Or ever, possibly. 

What made it even more crazy-making and painful was how in his own, understated way he realized it wasn’t even Brandon he was so unable to let go of – it was rather the image of Brandon he had had when they started out, and the vision of their future together, that brave, daring picture that unfolded before his eyes when in the middle of a downpour he had been holding a protective umbrella over a battered Brandon’s head. 

Had that day happened in a different lifetime, or to someone else entirely, someone who had looked and acted like Jamie, but turned out an imposter? Or had it been just a dream?

Anyhow, with everything said and done, the time had come to give Brandon a clear ultimatum. Yet Jamie was realistic enough about his own limitations to realize he was unable to simply do that, to approach Brandon and tell him straight up what he was seeing, what he wished for, and what he needed.

It might have been a large part of the problem that by this point, after all these months of confusion, of being deceived and lied to, of hanging on to the impossible and of giving up on himself only to get Brandon to stay, Jamie wasn’t even so sure himself what it was that he was seeing, wished for or needed.

Still, he decided to try. What exactly it was that he was going to try, he wasn’t so confident. But, making himself believe the corny overused pearl of wisdom that it was the process and not the outcome that counted, he went with it all the same.

He remembered how his internship supervisor, a brilliant if a little blunt and rough-around-the-edges guy, had used to say that the trouble with decisions was about making them and not executing them. That meant that the only genuine decisions were those you were committed to follow through. If you had made an actual decision, no power in the world could drag you away from accomplishing whatever you had set out to do. Like they said in another clichéd catchprase: where there was will there was a way. By contrast, if you insisted you had made a decision, and yet had heaps of, perhaps quite believable, excuses as to why you couldn’t carry it out, then in the end you hadn’t even made that decision to start with.

Jamie was wondering if whatever it was that he had chosen to attempt right now was in fact a decision or not. Probably not. But it bore emphasizing that he had no clue what other options he had. 

Other than keep breathing, keep going through the motions, and wait until either he or Brandon died, possibly. 

So, to counter these un-encouraging prospects, one day Jamie gave a talk with Brandon another shot. 

It sounded as trivial as it could get, only during that time even trying to talk to Brandon – not even talking as such, but as little as trying – took some heroic effort, the kind that it takes when you feel there’s no other way but to carry on doing things that experience tells you can only end up in a failure. 

If Jamie could compare it to any kind of physical sensation, it would be unnervingly close to rushing headfirst into a wall, knowing from experience that smashing your skull would be the most you can achieve in that way, but having no other choice than to hope this time you’d miraculously and quite unexplainably pass through an opening that hadn’t been there before rather than crash.

Feeling this way, it was little wonder if Jamie was quite unenthusiastic at attempting that charge once again. Which, obviously, still decreased his already barely existent chances at a success even further – this time he wouldn’t be able to convince even himself he could make this relationship work, much less convey that sentiment to Brandon with remotely sufficient flare and poise.

It was a dull, cloudy afternoon, with Jamie’s apartment shattered by the raging October wind on the outside as much as by the flat aura of faithlessness on the inside. It was also one of those rare days in recent memory when Brandon and Jamie apparently would spend those couple of post-work hours… no, not together, ‘together’ would be an unwarranted overstatement here, but at least sharing the same time and space. Thus, as much as Jamie was getting creative in finding excuses dragging him away from trying to talk to Brandon yet again, exposing himself naked to the silence and the hurt in that agonizingly familiar manner, somehow he forced himself into action.

After all, there was no telling when, or if, such an opportunity to try and settle the things would come along the next time. 

And so there Jamie was, prowling around the living room or creeping on the sofa, wanting to say so many things but clueless as to how to begin it. 

Every once in a while he’d send Brandon’s way a half-hopeful, half-pleading glance, praying for him to notice, to give in, to be the one to start the conversation for a change, even if in the angriest, cruelest, most upsetting way. At this point any kind of attention would have been better than no attention. Any kind of initiative on Brandon’s part would have shown that he, too, wasn’t comfortable with what was going on, that the situation affected him enough at least to make him say something, anything.

But no. Brandon remained still, his back firmly turned on Jamie while he was plastered to the chair, sipping about a tenth coffee mixed with about a fifth beer since he had returned from work, ogling his usual porn sites in Jamie’s presence without as much as a trace of embarrassment or reserve.

From what Jamie could tell, from where Jamie was looking, Brandon was perfectly fine with the way things were right now. Actually, he seemed much happier than he mostly had ever before since he moved in with Jamie. 

In a way Brandon looking so satisfied with and about the circumstances hurt Jamie even more than what these circumstances in themselves were doing to him. 

So yes, once again it was all up to Jamie. All the action. All the responsibility. All the bitterness and all the shame in case of the inevitable defeat. 

It had taken Jamie quite a number of minutes of squirming on the sofa, of staring at Brandon’s motionless back and that slouching shoulder line, of tracing Brandon’s morbidly fascinated gaze sinking into the screen buzzing with a presumed chaos of shapes and colors Jamie had no interest nor will nor strength to see for himself – in brief, quite a number of minutes of undergoing an excruciating trial of silence, until he was finally capable of putting it to an end. 

He somehow squeezed the voice through his clamped vocal chords, shaky and insecure, so pathetically unsure of its own right to exist.

“…I… I can’t handle this.”

This wasn’t what Jamie had planned to say. It wasn’t the confident, self-possessed, decisive line he was aiming at and hoping for. Most definitely it wasn’t a tough thing to say, a commanding thing to say, or a powerful thing to say.

Well, what it was, at least, was an honest thing to say.

Although Jamie did know that Brandon didn’t value honesty very much. And he did know he couldn’t expect Brandon’s approval of that kind of honesty. 

Without as much as a blink, keeping his eyes fixed on the screen until he had Jamie thinking it was actually unnatural to physically ignore another human being in the same room to that degree, Brandon only gave out a short snarl.

“Well, whoever’s asking you to?”

No, Jamie didn’t expect Brandon’s approval, or compassion, or any kind of decency for that matter. At least so he had thought.

And yet, being once more confronted with the truth he didn’t want to know, all the more compellingly, with all the less space for denial, was like the last straw that had Jamie’s inner walls that had kept him resourceful and brave all this time finally collapse.

Also, the plain, simple truth in Brandon’s rhetorical question was too plain and too simple to bear. It was as plain and simple as realizing that postponing a visit to the doctor’s won’t make your illness go away, or that waiting patiently for your bus in a snowstorm when the weather had paralyzed all of the traffic for hours won’t make it come any sooner, if ever.

No, nobody was asking Jamie to _handle this_ , to handle Brandon, to handle _anything_. Brandon was doing perfectly fine without Jamie _handling_ anything for him. It was no one but Jamie who had made a prisoner out of himself, a martyr, the one who insisted on repeating that gutsy stunt he was incapable of performing, and expecting comfort and sympathy when he ended up bruised and in pain each single time. 

No wise man speech that Jamie might have had carefully planned, no heartstring-tucking declaration of devotion and no sage cautionary tale monologue out of the dozens that Jamie seemed to have memorized could now possibly make its way into Jamie’s head. No words, not those that Jamie was able to come up with anyway, could rival Brandon’s brutal, to-the-point truthfulness.

That was how Jamie quietly fell apart, tears rushing from beneath his convulsively squeezed eyelids and streaming down his face, forcibly advancing through the defeated, silent emptiness that filled Jamie’s head.

And then, although Jamie had covered his face with his palm to save himself at least some of the disgrace, that silence was cut into pieces with Brandon’s undoubtedly annoyed gasp, followed by a condescending snort.

“Sure, go ahead and cry.”

He made it sound like crying under these circumstances was a most childish, laughable and unmanly thing to do.

It possibly was, in Jamie’s mind. 

And yet, Jamie’s reaction to Brandon’s disdain was not something Jamie himself had expected. 

Instead of making a run, hiding someplace secluded and safe under a rock and waiting until the humiliation finally killed him, he felt himself grow calm on the inside – the before a storm kind of calm. 

Through all the mayhem of despair, helplessness and regret within, he suddenly heard that quiet, composed voice telling him shyly yet repeatedly that this was wrong – that whatever he had done to Brandon, or whatever he hadn’t done although he should have, he had done nothing to deserve to be treated like that. To be treated with no kindness, no respect, no human instincts, just pure contempt. 

Decisively yet carefully wiping his tears with his fingertips, Jamie promptly regained his composure, bringing his sobbing back to a steady, controlled breathing. Readjusting himself on the sofa, he sat up straight, holding his head up high, not caring anymore if it was Brandon’s back he had as an only conversation partner. 

Before he knew it, that voice within had made him feel a few inches taller and about a lifetime more confident. 

“So this is what you want? To hurt the only person who’s been there for you? Is this the way you want your life to be?” 

The realization of the truth in his own words struck him like a flash of lightning. _The only person who’d been there for Brandon_ , that was who he was. As simple as that. If nothing else, he deserved credit at least for that, and credit he got none. 

Brandon had consistently treated him like a pest he had to put up with as long as he lived in Jamie’s apartment. 

Obviously, Brandon was not half as impressed with Jamie’s words of self-discovery as Jamie himself. 

“Whatever the fuck do _you_ care about the way my life is”, he sputtered with that spiteful accent on the ‘you’ part while still persistently sticking his gaze into the computer screen and showing Jamie his back. In essence, it was a generic _mind your own business_ line compounded with what sounded in Jamie’s ears like an _I’m not taking any shit from whiney boy-scouts_ statement. 

The glowing wave of righteous anger had commenced its way through Jamie’s bloodstream, up to his head and down his spine. The wave was slow and steady, but unyielding.

It hit against Jamie’s feet, making him stand up firm and tall from the sofa, that ever-present symbol of his defeats in this story, and flowed through his mind, making the blood bounce against his temples. 

So much had been wrong, so much had been unfair with how Brandon treated Jamie, with how he addressed him right now and how he refused to validate anything he said, did or felt that Jamie hardly knew where and what to begin with.

Yet, armed with that quietly smoldering wave, he didn’t need to think this over, to make up elaborate scenarios inside his head like he always had when it came to those so-called serious talks with Brandon. This time, the words came to him spontaneously, all on their own. 

“What do I care?”, he slowly repeated Brandon’s question, his voice layered with that newly found chilly confidence. From then on, his tone was like on a downhill slide, accelerating and fortifying with each phrase until it was on the verge of an explosion. “You live here. You’ve been sleeping with me. I’ve been constantly dragging you out from some kind of shit.” 

He took his aim with each statement calmly and methodically, like a seasoned boxer would with his well-prepared, strategic punches. And as he was saying these words, he finally approached Brandon and leant over him by the computer desk, thus refusing to carry on being ignored any longer. 

It was Jamie’s place, for chrissake – who Brandon thought he was claiming all this space only to himself? 

Jamie’s move worked to a degree, as proved by Brandon leaning backwards in his chair and tilting his head up toward Jamie, a trace of mildly curious mockery wandering around his lips on that otherwise expressionless face. 

Undisturbed, Jamie went on.

“So yes, you see, I do care about your life, because it has just so happened that it’s difficult for me to tell your life from mine. Your business is my business now, every single thing you do affects me. There, this is what do I care, if that’s what you wanted to know”, he spat out angrily, finishing with his voice distinctly raised and the pace of his words sped up. 

Brandon didn’t break their eye contact. He didn’t even show any signs of discomfort under the pressure of Jamie’s complaints. Unyielding, he retained that smug look on his face where Jamie expected at least a trace of remorse, or a pint of self-reflection. 

That was when Jamie knew – or rather, felt before he knew it – that he had lost, again. He had lost by failing to get through to Brandon.

“Nobody asked you to save me.”

The ice-cold blade of Brandon’s words was admirably skillful in the way it sank right into Jamie’s soul, hurting him, crippling perhaps, but not quite killing him.

Perhaps this was because, again, all Brandon was saying was the truth. And the problem with truth, the problem with how defenseless Jamie was in its time after time, was exactly that: it hurt, but you had to live with it nonetheless.

_Truth_. The _truth_. What an obnoxious word. It got stuck to the back of Jamie’s mind like the sticky, malformed entity it was, and Jamie couldn’t shake it.

It pressed itself to his lips as if all on its own although he didn’t even wish it there.

“True, nobody did.” He inhaled, briefly closed his eyes, and let the words flow freely, just as they appeared in his mind, already full-formed like they had been stored there for the longest time. Which they possibly had. “Which is why I never complain. I know that all this is all really just what I’ve been asking for. But you were wondering what do I care, so I told you what.” 

The images and experiences stormed his mind in a split-second long flashback of all he had sacrificed for Brandon, all he had endured, and all that Brandon had put him through. This, too, was like opening the floodgates, which had so far been shut away for the sake of not confronting Jamie with the devastating reality of what their relationship had become.

Normally Jamie wasn’t so prone to gesticulation, but now, unable to contain the agitation taking him over, he started to wave around his hands and jerk his shoulders like a petulant preschooler about to throw a tantrum. 

“You can’t do that, you know? You can’t live with someone and be using his help, and then suddenly go telling him your life is none of his business or that there’s nothing going on between you two. I mean, if you can do this and not feel involved, at all, then great, good for you, I wish I could do that too, but I can’t.” 

Jamie hurled those words of self-righteous indignation, lost and carried away by their tide – and then suddenly he came around, remembering he wasn’t confined in some sound-proof solitary cell inside his mind, like in the scenes he had played out in his imagination so many times before. This time, he was actually out there in the real word with a real person who he supposedly was trying to communicate with. Only he didn’t, because there was no response, no trace of as much as an echo, absolutely nothing that would imply Jamie wasn’t in that room alone.

This was suddenly alarming, so Jamie stopped. 

Only then did it occur to him that all the while he was delivering his impassionate monologue on Brandon’s wrongs and responsibilities, Brandon listened on stoic and unflinching. 

He waited patiently until Jamie finished, he remained silent for exactly the right amount of time to begin to torture Jamie with the familiar sensation of being completely unheard and ignored, and only then would he carefully execute his response – a short, whispery, exaggerated:

“Wow”.

And before Jamie was able to process the turmoil that this response had induced inside him, before his own reaction could travel all the way up his nervous system into his conscious mind so that he realized what it even was in the first place, Brandon continued in that dry, venomous tone:

“All used up and involved, poor thing”. 

Jamie’s insides began to shake. He could literally feel his stomach, intestines and the like tremble and threaten to collapse.

He suddenly remembered – or rather, experienced it first-handedly – why exactly it was that he had been avoiding this kind of conversation for such a long time.

Yes, he had his reasons, very good reasons for not confronting Brandon with any of this, for putting up with the insufferable, for not telling Brandon the truth straight into his face. 

Now, as a result of an unexpected lapse of common sense, he had forgotten about those reasons. The blackout may have lasted but for a moment, but its consequences were devastating. 

Devastating not to Brandon, of course, who followed Jamie’s stuffed, paralyzed silence with another couple of unassumingly derisive lines. 

“Are you done yet? Because, you know, I kind of have time to pass. And a life to live as well.” He punctuated each phrase with a slight, yet masterfully pretentious rise in intonation (as it turned out, for someone this uncommunicative Brandon made quite a decent voice actor). 

Seeing Jamie – predictably – stunned and speechless, he turned his head and shoulders away from Jamie and back to his computer screen. Jamie didn’t interrupt him anymore, as he had no more arguments left to even do this, no more cards to play. 

For a while it appeared then that Brandon had proved his point and should have been happy to acknowledge his victory. 

It quickly transpired, however, that he wasn’t quite done kicking the defeated guy, and his casual resuming of the click-and-scroll routine was nothing but a show, a stage design meant to make his razor-sharp words sound all the more vile and cut all the more deeply as he nonchalantly continued, his eyes plastered to the screen, not even bothering to look for Jamie somewhere in the corner of his vision:

“You know, a life. Ever heard of that? Maybe you could use one, too.”

This was the breaking point. Or perhaps simply another one in the endless line of breaking points. Jamie couldn’t tell exactly just how broken he had been up until this moment, nor did he really care. 

All he knew was that this time it had been enough to make him run away from his own home, simply because he couldn’t seem to bear staying there any minute longer.

In truth, he couldn’t bear staying inside his own body any longer, but that one vessel he was unable to escape, so he had to substitute it with his apartment. 

Clenching his teeth and squeezing his palms in agony, Jamie turned quickly to the shelf where his telephone and wallet were lying, and grabbed them with a twitchy movement of his wood-tense arms. Then he threw on some shoes and the overcoat, and hurriedly shut the door behind him, taking the clank of its hinges with a blend of dread, despair and relief.

That was what being with Brandon, or beside Brandon, or in Brandon’s presence, whatever – that was precisely what having Brandon in your life was like. It was nothing but a blend, a blend of contradicting facts, conflicting emotions and senseless interactions, all carried out to a degree when you never even knew not just what to expect from him, but also, first and foremost, what it was that you yourself were feeling, what it was that you yourself wanted, and ultimately, who it was that you yourself were.

***

For quite a few minutes after he had left the apartment, Jamie wandered around through the appropriately campy aura of wind and rain. And it wasn’t even for the sake of the dramatic effect, at least not deliberately on Jamie’s part. He really was too overwhelmed, too consumed with what he had just heard and learnt from Brandon, that he didn’t, he couldn’t pay attention to his physical sensations. 

Actually, it was more than just about paying attention. Jamie was literally so tuned out from his own body that it seemed like it didn’t exist – like he had no physical form and was nothing but that inflamed, pulsating pulp of shattered dreams and bruised ego. 

It had taken him a mile or maybe two of strolling through the parks and back alleys toward a goal unknown before it finally struck him that he was cold and soaked, and also tired, not to mention sweaty from his frantically fast-paced walking manner. 

Briefly, he sat down on one of the benches. He obviously was spoilt for choice in that regard, as all seats in sight had been invitingly empty. Apart from a handful of jogging maniacs (why even the few people he passed by along the way had to remind him of Brandon in their activities, by the way?), with the weather like this, nobody would stick as much as a fingertip out of the doorway. Jamie observed that with a self-addressed scoff, before reluctantly realizing that the wet, windy sitting spot was quickly getting too uncomfortable even for him in the state that he was. 

As much as he wouldn’t mind just staying there as long as it took to melt into the gloomy background without a trace, he realized he had to get away from that haven of solitude. He couldn’t catch a cold, especially not now, not under these familiar circumstances of him running around through the bleak rainy aura because of Brandon. That would definitely suck, however awkwardly that may have sounded under the circumstances.

Besides, he still had to go to work the next morning, and, as reason told him, work would probably remain the sole thing that retained any chances of keeping him sane these days. 

Work… that seemed like such an abstract concept right now, something that belonged to another dimension, some literary fiction. It was something that the persistent voice of reason, quiet as it may have been, whispered into his ear time and again – that work, this unfamiliar, fantastic concept, was something he had to take care of in his best interest, as well as this single thing that would take care of him in return. 

Jamie had to take that word in a good faith, because by himself, as he was right now, he was unable to imagine himself simply getting up in the morning and going to work – not now that even taking the next breath was a struggle, not now that his field of vision was limited to no more than five, ten seconds forward. 

Eventually, he got up and trudged to a nearest coffee shop, which mercifully wasn’t as crowded as it could have been on a rainy autumn evening, enabling Jamie to settle alone at a two-person table in his private corner of self-pity. 

He ordered a doppio, as if he really needed any more stimulation. And then, after he had brought the cup to his table, as he rested upon his palm his forehead with the damp dark locks plastered all over it, he took another plunge into the darkness of his own mind, into those places where there had been no thoughts, no interpretations of reality, no conclusions anymore, just pure, raw, nerve-exposed kind of pain. 

He reached into the pocket of his coat and took out the phone. Placing the device screen up in front of him on the table, he wondered whatever he needed it for and whatever had prompted him to take it with him while these critical moments lasted. Was it that he had expected it’d come in useful if he got out of control and found himself in a need to make a distress call? Or had he been hoping it would bring him distraction to the rescue in case his mind got too heated and the load of emotions too heavy?

Whichever it had been, at least for now distress calls didn’t seem like they were or would be a necessity in any foreseeable future. As the telephone was here anyway, Jamie decided he’d go with the second option, and started to mindlessly click through his data folders.

He started out with the picture folder – and although he had known this would be the case, it still hurtfully surprised him how few pictures of Brandon he had. Maybe ‘virtually no’ would have been the better way to express it, because Brandon didn’t want to be taken any pictures, especially including shots of his face, so as a result, the only traces of Brandon in Jamie’s picture folder were the background settings, such as Brandon’s palms or lap, for the images of Jamie’s cats and hamsters. Actually, looking at these pictures reminded Jamie how meticulously, with his typical anal-retentive manner, Brandon would verify if the pictures taken indeed met his no-face/no-identification standards, and demand the deletion of those that hadn’t earned his stamp of approval.

It may have been a little disappointing, yes – but really, what hadn’t been disappointing to Jamie in this relationship? – but hadn’t seemed to matter this far. Jamie would always tell himself that it was okay, that these were just pictures, mere pixel bundles with of no greater importance. That it didn’t matter if he had pictures of Brandon or not as long as Brandon himself was right beside him, physically present and within an arm’s reach. The firmest proof of Brandon’s being there in Jamie’s life was, well, Brandon himself, wasn’t it?

And, as now Jamie had come to bitterly realize, this kind of thinking was exactly what defined their relationship and, effectively, doomed it. So it went: Jamie wanted something – Brandon would refuse it – Jamie decided ‘well, it can’t be that important then, I can live without it, just being with Brandon is all that matters anyway’.

Until he woke up on a day like this, forced to acknowledge that what he had bought at the price of his own needs and wishes was an empty shell of a cruel, unloving man, one that bore only superficial physical resemblance to what Jamie thought and hoped Brandon had been. 

Once thoughts of this sort started to hurl inside his head, Jamie made the smartest decision to move from the depressing picture folder to the absolutely innocuous and pacifying text message folder. He didn’t have the habit of deleting the messages he received, so that he ended up having a fair record of them, sometimes reaching as far as a couple of years, depending on how long he’d had a specific cellphone and how active he’d been socially in that time. 

He considered those short, often awkward combinations of fragmentary sentences barely passable as written English to be a surprisingly heartwarming records of the few worthwhile relationships he had, the undisputable proof of him being linked to the outside world and not floating aimlessly in his inner space like the outcast he’d so often perceived himself to be. Yet now that he was looking at these shallow, trivial messages, remembering that he essentially had retained these displays of everyday commonplaceness solely not to feel so unnoticed and alone, in his current frame of mind he could only gasp at himself being such a pathetic no-life. 

He had to scroll down quite a bit to find the most recent message he got from Brandon. Obviously, it had a September date, because it had to be earlier than the Operation Branlet – after that Brandon had practically severed all forms of communication with Jamie via all channels. Not to make any mistake, those latest couple of messages were nothing fancy, either, mostly limited to ‘okays’, ‘rights’ and ‘not-sures’. As Jamie could recall very clearly, those were Brandon’s responses to Jamie’s own wily – yet pretty inept – attempts at maintaining any pretenses of a normal situation at home by sending Brandon all sorts of practical and not really that urgent (or frankly, not really that necessary) questions about the chores, groceries or cats or hamsters. 

The results were such that he couldn’t exactly say that Brandon had cooperated, but still, he also hadn’t explicitly rejected Jamie’s efforts, either. Unbelievable as it may have seemed back then, those curt grains of pseudo-messages had been actually, by Brandon’s current standards, real exercises in openness and kindness. 

It also was telling a lot about Jamie and his present frame of mind that he seriously missed and idealized Brandon responding with a ‘right’ or ‘maybe’ to one in five of Jamie’s questions. Because yes, those still counted as a response, aloof and evasive though they may have been; call them half-hearted, or no-hearted even, but they did somewhat work as an acknowledgement of Jamie’s existence. They really had been something at least one class above a complete, impenetrable silence. 

Stepping still further back in time, Jamie arrived at the superficially delightful early September records, when both he and Brandon had put their best foot forward (…or, well, regarding Brandon, at least so it had seemed at the time) to make it look like things were normal and they were getting along just fine. Of course, it all ended irreversibly with that epic trainwreck that was Brandon’s birthday. And although their communication prior to that crash event had still been far from perfect, right now, comparing it to the mess of a relationship he was now being force-fed by his own demand, Jamie couldn’t help but feel at once nostalgic, euphoric and wistful reading through Brandon’s succinct texts and wishing he could turn back time even if just by this one month, just to become his own self from that time for however brief couple of moments.

Good Lord, who would have thought that barely a few weeks earlier Brandon could still afford to be the one to write to Jamie first every once in a while, accomplishing such feats of initiative and caring as asking Jamie what he would like to have for dinner, or complaining about the cloudy, chilly weather! 

Then again, upon a more careful scrutiny of the texts – and did Jamie have all the time in the world to scrutinize every nook and cranny of those messages, reading them back and forth, front and back, until he had virtually memorized all of them – Jamie began to doubt his own euphoric perceptions. Relatively caring and effusive as they may have been, texts from that period did reveal clues that things hadn’t been right, that they had been leading straight to that huge landslide on September 11. 

All things considered, they still consisted mostly of ‘rights’, ‘okays’ and ‘not-sures’. No conversation thread lasted more than three text exchanges. Rewinding time inside his head as he traced Brandon’s responses word by word, Jamie remembered exactly how many of his own messages had been left unanswered, and how promptly he employed all of the defense mechanisms he had at his disposal (‘I’m sure he’s just busy’; ‘He must have missed this one’; ‘It doesn’t really matter’) just to avoid facing the cruel truth that he had been repeatedly ignored – consistently seen right through. 

Of course, it was what Jamie could only see now, in hindsight. The very same lines that had once reassured him by strengthening his fortress of denial only now would reveal themselves to Jamie for what they were: abrupt, reluctant, forced words of a weary man trying his hardest – which may not have been saying much at all – to convincingly pretend he was comfortable around Jamie and okay with who they were together.

Jamie could have seen this day coming a long time before, by a really solid margin. He could have spared himself truckloads of anguish, humiliation and confusion. But he had refused to. His inner world of fantasy and the promises it would give had been too alluring, too soothing, too perfect to just give up. So Jamie hadn’t, and instead he waited, waited until that world had shattered all on its own, without anyone’s help. 

With these thoughts pounding at the back of his head, Jamie read on, even though he could feel each word draining out the life inside him. He was actually surprised at how much life he really had in store – you would have thought this prolonged torture would kill him sooner rather than later, but for now it didn’t seem a foreseeable prospect at all.

Hopping for a good couple of dozens of minutes through his inbox, consistently discarding what few messages sent by anyone other than Brandon there may have been, at one August point Jamie was finally brought to a stop. 

It was because he had come across the exchange he had with Javi on Jessie’s birthday.

The feeling was so sudden and so powerful that Jamie had to put his telephone away for a moment, then close his eyes and simply let the reminiscence in. 

It didn’t matter if at the time he had instantly forgotten all about this conversation, dragged right back into the eye of the storm that his daily struggle with Brandon was. It didn’t matter if since Jessie’s birthday he hadn’t revisited that scene even once. Now, it all came back to him in a flash. How lonely and despondent he had been feeling that day – not unlike this day at all, although now was naturally suitably amplified by the scale and the progression of the cancer on his and Brandon’s relationship proportional to the passage of time. Or how he had felt like the world had forgotten about his existence after he had alienated those few people that might still have it in them to care about him.

And how with barely a couple of right words put in the right way at the right time Javi had been able to disperse those heavy clouds of hopelessness, letting Jamie know that against all the evidence, he had been alright – he had been indeed cared for, and remembered about, and missed. 

The urge Jamie had experienced that day to call Javi, to hear his voice, to feel his presence and share with him the burden that had kept him crawling for many months, now returned with a multiplied, irresistible power. 

Before he realized what he was doing, Jamie grabbed his phone back and pressed the dial button on Javi’s last message.

The first call waiting tone that resounded in Jamie’s ear had a sobering effect, like it had been directly asking him if he knew what the hell, and why, he was doing. 

And although it had made Jamie’s heart race and his temples drown in unpleasant heat, this genuine sense of doubt had not, however, been enough to get Jamie to step out of this unexplainable impulse.

Luckily, Javi didn’t keep Jamie waiting for too long until he answered the phone – if he had, Jamie would eventually likely have disconnected the call sooner rather than later.

“Hola, Jamie, hey howdy what’s up?”

Javi’s joyous, youthful tone was exactly the way Jamie had remembered it. He still articulated Jamie’s name in a Spanish manner, making the first sound ‘h’ rather than ‘j’, and he still sounded like talking to Jamie was the best thing that had ever happened to him, all the more striking as Jamie was perfectly aware that if anything, the opposite was the truth. 

Just hearing that voice and realizing all these intricacies of their relationship underneath made Jamie’s eyes instantly brim with tears, blocking his throat until he had a hard time even squeezing out those first conventional words of greeting. 

He closed his eyes and pulled himself together, resolute to dive into this, even though he wasn’t sure where this was supposed to lead – where he wanted it to take him. 

“Hi… So, how have you been?” 

Funny how these all had been simple, obvious words, and yet producing every one of them had been such a strain on both Jamie’s chords and mind. 

Thankfully, Javi seemed oblivious at least for now, keeping the vibe light and playful as he retorted:

“Good, but a little angry, I must say. What you’ve been up to, man? Why don’t you ever call or come around?” 

Jamie was certain that Javi wasn’t too serious about what he just had said. Ever the guileless kid, Javi obviously meant those words as a friendly superficial reprimand for not staying in touch, and not as an indication that he knew Jamie had actually been up to something.

And yet, Javi’s lines were right on target, so spot-on that they truly had Jamie feel devastated. 

They weren’t just this refined evidence that Jamie had been missed – they also took on the shape of that question Jamie didn’t even know he had longed to be asked for months now.

That question which could very well read: _What’s going on, Jamie? Is there something wrong? Don’t be a stranger, you know you can tell me._

He may have been reading too much into this, but having spent half a year now feeling invisible and ignored, repressing all of his needs for someone who would give him no credit for that sacrifice (or anything else, really), now to simply get the impression that he was really being seen and heard reduced Jamie to a bundle of exposed nerves.

“I… you see, I think I just haven’t been in the best place to do that.”

This muffled confession was about the most Jamie could say at the moment to stay true to what had been going on in his life while not risking stumbling on words too direct and too candid about the torment that had accompanied him throughoit.

The simple-minded, good-natured guy that he was, Javi had probably expected more of a conventional ‘I’m fine, just busy’ line, so upon hearing Jamie’s statement of blues he was understandably confused. 

“Oh”, was his reflexive response followed by a very much audible, embarrassed pause. 

Making the most of this unintentional break, Jamie took a few breaths to gain some perspective and regain his composure. Next, he proceeded with the essential inquiries of his own, trying to make it before Javi was able to move to some other to-the-point questions that might feel a little too candid and a little too awkward for a telephone conversation.

“Is Jessie around?”

“Uh…” This hesitant interjection was perfectly enough to let Jamie know everything he needed to know, so much that it even painted a bitter smile on his lips as Javi predictably followed after another very conspicuous couple of seconds of pensive silence: “Uh, no, he’s away, he’s, um, he’s got a job in the town this evening”. He concluded this obvious lie with a genuine and convinced, if inadvertently comical reassurance: “We can talk if you want”.

Dear, Javi proved yet again that he was an even poorer liar than Jamie himself could ever dream to be. Never mind those suggestive intervals during which Javi clearly wondered how to conceal from Jamie the fact that Jessie was probably right beside him, looking over his shoulder to figure out what the matter was and why after all that had (not) happened Jamie still had the nerve to call (not to mention to call Javi of all people and instead of Jessie himself). Javi’s fallacy was crystal clear even from the very uncharacteristic way Javi had produced his utterances just now, so different from his usual fast-talking swagger. 

Then, wasn’t that undistorted honesty one of the major reasons why Jessie had quit Jamie over Javi? Jessie was the kind of guy who liked it neat and clear and open, no misunderstandings, no manipulations, no games. He and Javi really made a good match in that respect. 

Come to think of it, Jamie and Brandon seemed like their negative, a parody of what a strong, healthy relationship could be.

Trying not to snort or give any other audible sign of discouraged amusement, Jamie simply replied: “Well, I don’t know, why don’t you come over here instead?” He gave the name of the coffee shop he currently resided in, and added encouragingly, if a little impersonally: “I’d really appreciate it if you could make it here, I mean if you have the time and the leisure to do it”.

The air was getting perceivably tense on the other side of the virtual wire. Jamie could picture pretty precisely Javi’s clueless face and his authentic confusion at the weird direction this conversation had started to take. And yes, he was also beginning to feel guilty about ruining Javi’s evening in such a way (not to mention making Jessie angry by putting himself yet again in the role of the bully putting down his sweet baby boyfriend, although this time it really was unintentional on Jamie’s part). 

Calling him had been a mistake after all, had it not?

Jamie had been supposed to do his thing and make it on his own, as simple as that. He should have known better. 

Javi was, however, brave enough to reply as casually as he could, neutralizing to a largely positive effect the uneasiness still echoing in his voice:

“Right… sure, why not?” 

This reply actually was a pleasant surprise to Jamie. He had rather expected Javi to bring forward some default excuse and take a quick, easy way out of this funny confrontation than to greet him with an approval of his idea. 

Before he could think of an appropriate answer to match Javi’s cooperativeness and send it through the wire with a smile, Javi surprised him even more with his kindness, adding in a wary, yet unmistakably concerned question:

“Um, Jamie, are you alright?”

It was quite extraordinary, the way the simplest words could hit you the hardest, take you over the strongest. 

Overwhelmed with this sudden unspeakable feeling of being really noticed the way he was right then and there, thrown off balance with the awareness of how agonizingly rare this feeling had become in his life, Jamie just stood there for a moment, silent and still, choking on the million thoughts swelling up in his throat like he had just been punched straight in the solar plexus.

“It seems so”, he eventually replied faintly, after a worried “Jamie?” in the telephone reminded him Javi had still been waiting for his reply.

But gone was his momentary, blink-and-miss fake confidence, the costume he had put on his voice not just for Javi, but also his own sake lost completely, replaced with the raw, pulsating sensation of disclosing before another how helpless and vulnerable he was, how desperate he was to be heard and to have someone to lean on in this hour of need. 

The excitement of the notion that a willing, kind ally may have been but a hand’s reach away blended with the familiar fear of being discarded, ridiculed, abandoned, and the shame of showing his weakness when he was already laughable enough as he was, of showing his flaws when he wasn’t allowed to have any. 

Eventually, the sheer momentum of the emotions bundled up inside him took him over, and he couldn’t hide anymore, nor even care about being unable to carry on doing that.

“…Okay, so truth be told, I don’t know. I simply don’t know.”

He heard the voice come out of his mouth like it hadn’t belonged to him, like its source had been on the outside. That was only fair, because if it had been up to him, he would never have the guts to reveal to anyone that he was weak and needed help. He would instead perpetuate that myth of his own self-sufficiency and invincibility, refusing to let the world question if he could handle it all on his own.

It was so distressing and even scary to realize that at this deep, core level he may not have been so different from Brandon with those things he so loathed about him.

And yet, right now somehow something was pushing him with so much might in an opposite direction, leaving him no other way but to expose his weakness and his need, and of all people specifically to the kid who had stolen his long time partner from him. 

For his part, Javi wasn’t going to let him down, either.

“Hang on, man. I’ll be there in a minute.” His voice echoed no confusion anymore. It was calm, resolute and serious, like the world could hardly ever hear from him, and it made Jamie experience full-on that contrary to what he had expected, trusting Javi may have been the best decision he had made in all those months. “Just hang on.”

“Yeah… I will, thanks”, Jamie breathed through a choking throat before disconnecting the call, right on time before he finally exploded into a long overdue pool of tears of comfort and relief.

It may have seemed like he couldn’t have been further from fulfilling his promise to hang on, but Jamie knew that the appearances here were deceiving. 

For him, right now, hanging on meant letting go.

[CHAPTER INCOMPLETE, CHECK FOR UPDATES ONCE A MONTH WHILE I'M TRYING (not really too hard though) TO MAKE IT BEFORE 2030]


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